
diss LErfS 



Book 



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Cop}Tiglil X^_ 



COFYRICIIT DEPOSIT. 



CULTURE, DISCIPLINE 

AND 

DEMOCRACY 



aJ DUNCAN YOCUM. Ph. D. 

Professor of Pedagogy, University of Pennsylvania 



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PHILADELPHIA: 
CHRISTOPHER SOWER COMPANY 

1913 



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Copyright, I9I3» by 
Christopher Sower Company 



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CONTENTS \ 



PAGE 

Foreword vii 

CHAPTER I 

The Present Status of Culture Discipline and Direct Prepa- 
ration FOR Life ii 

I. Conditions Resulting in Reaction Toward Academic Specialization, ii. — 
2. The Lessening Confidence in Formal Discipline, 17. — 3. The Increasing 
Demand for Direct Preparation for Life, 19. — 4. Increased Willingness for 
Readjustment, 20. — 5. Readjustment Must Be Determined by Scientific 
Research, 23. — 6. Direct Preparation for Life More Certain Than General 
Discipline, 24. — 7. Either Academic or Vocational Specialization May Be 
Hostile to Culture and Democracy, 25. — 8. The Mutual Interdependence of 
Direct Preparation for Life and General Discipline, 29. 

CHAPTER II 

An Analysis of "Formal Discipline" into Essential Phases 
OF Formal Self-activity — Including General Discipline 30 

I. The Aim of Education Useful Self-activity, 30. — 2. Educational or 
Formal Phases of Self-activity Distinguished from Its Psychological Forms, 
33. — 3. The Five Educational or Formal Phases of Self-activity, 33. — 4. Dis- 
tinction between Direct and Indirect Furtherance of the Educational Aim, 
35. — 5. Cumulative Impression, 36. — 6. Initial Remembrance, 40. — 7. Vary- 
ing Apperception, 47. — 8. Specific Discipline, 57. — 9. General Discipline, 76. 

CHAPTER III 

A Discussion of the Conditions Favorable to General Dis- 
cipline 79 

I. Extent of General Discipline Dependent Upon Occurrence of the General 
Stimulus, 79. — 2. Necessity for Determining the Extent to Which it is Useful, 
82. — 3. Continuity Its First Condition, 83. — 4. As General a Stimulus as'^is 
Useful, the Second, 85. — 5. The Third, Permanent Association of the General 
Stimulus with Typical Applications, 90. — 6. The Fourth, the Habit of Seeking 
Unaccustomed Applications, 91. — 7. The Fifth, Emotionalizing of the General 
Stimulus, 93. — 8. The Sixth, Its Varying Apperception, 96. — 9. The Seventh, 
the Knowledge Necessary to Its Identification and Application, 98. — 10. The 
Eighth, the Habit of Analysis and Synthesis on the Recognition of Any Part of 

It, lOI. 



IV CONTENTS 

CHAPTER IV 

PAGE 

The Comparative Uselessness of the Old "Disciplinary" or 
"Formal" Subjects to All Phases of Formal Self-activity 
Except Specific Discipline no 

I. The Usefulness of an Idea or Activity Dependent Upon the Relationships 
in Which It Is Recalled, no. — 2. Mode of Measuring Their Usefulness, in. — 
3. The General Course of Study Must Emphasize Subjects Containing High 
Proportion of Directly Useful Material, 112. — 4. The Study of the Formal 
Subjects But Little Favorable to Phases of Formal Self-activity Other Than 
Specific Discipline, 113. — 5. The Limited Formal Self -activity Resulting From 
the Elementary Study of a Foreign Language, 114. — 6. The Limitations to the 
Formal Value of Mathematical Study, 116. — 7. Varying Apperception Fur- 
thered by the Presentation of the Most Many-sided and Recurring Relation- 
ships Wherever Found, 119. — 8. Material Organized for Direct Furtherance 
Most Useful to Varying Apperception, 120. — 9. Recapitulation of the Advan- 
tages of Direct Preparation Over the Formal Branches in the Furtherance of 
General Discipline, 120. — 10. General Conclusions Concerning the Course of 
Study, 122. — II. The Greater Part of Mathematics, Exclusive of Arithmetic, 
Must Be Eliminated from the Required General Course, 123. — 12. Foreign 
Languages Should Be Required Only of Those to Whose Specialization They 
are Essential, 126. — 13. The Place of the Natural Sciences in the General 
Course, 130. — 14. Increased Representation of Subjects Rich in Humanistic 
Content, 132. — 15. The Use of Selected Portions of Academic Branches No 
Menace to Discipline, 132. — 16. The Partial Subject Matter Selected Can 
Usually Be Organized Academically, as Well as for Direct Preparation, 134. 

CHAPTER V 

The Interdependence of Culture and Direct Preparation 

FOR Life 136 

I. Culture Itself a Partial Phase of Direct Preparation for Life, 137. — 2. The 
Essential Factors in Culture, 137. — 3. Selection and Specialization Necessary 
in Culture Itself, 138. — 4. Specialization in Culture Must Be Preceded by a 
Culture Common to All Educated Individuals, 140. — 5. Culture Must Further 
Other Phases of the Educational Aim, 140. — 6. A General Culture Related to 
Vocation Should Parallel All Vocational Specialization, and Direct Prepara- 
tion, All Specialization in Culture, 143. — 7. Undemocratic to Develop Artistic 
Expression at the Expense of Aesthetic Appreciation, 144. — 8. The Rapid 
Multiplication of Means for Developing a Common Aesthetic Appreciation, 
147. — 9. Instruction in Aesthetics Should Be Distinct from Other Phases 
of Instruction Which Interfere with It, 152. — 10. Both Direct|Preparation and 
General Discipline Must Include a Part of the Content Most Useful for Cul- 
ture, 156. — II. Culture Not Only Included in Direct Preparation, but Depend- 
ent Upon It, 158. — 12. The Study of Greek and Latin Belongs to Specializa- 
tion, 160. — 13. The Test of Relative Worth Determines the Cultural Material 
Which Should Be Required of All, 162. — 14. No Ground Remains for Exclud- 
ing From Higher Education the Students Who Fail in the Old Formal Subjects, 
163. 



CONTENTS V 

CHAPTER VI 

PAGE 

Uniformity for Various Localities in the General Course 
OF Study Limited to the Essential Relationships Which 
Must Be Certainly Memorized 165 

I. The Fundamental Nature of the Distinction Between Essential and 
Optional Relationships, 165. — 2. An Exact Determination of Relative Worth 
Unnecessary, 166. — 3. Courses of Study, While Uniform in Their Essential 
Relationships, are Identical in the Relative Usefulness of Their Optional 
Relationships Rather Than in the Optional Relationships Themselves, 167. — 
4. The Certain Memorizing of Essential Relationships a Necessary Condition 
to the Mastery of Optional Material, 169. — 5. Ignorance of Essential Rela- 
tionships Too Severe a Penalty for Carelessness or Incompetence, 171. — 6. 
For the Sake of Both Individual and State Essential Knowledge Must Be 
Compelled in School, 171. — 7. Specialization Varying With Individuals Should 
Parallel Direct Preparation in General and Be Paralleled by It, 172. 



CHAPTER Vn 

The Inadequacy of Tests for the Mere Elimination of 
Harmful, Specialized, or Impracticable Material from 
THE Course of Study i7q 

I. Dr. McMurry's Test for Elimination Suggestive Rather than Determin- 
ing, 179. — 2. A More Adequate Test for Total Rejection or Exclusion of Par- 
ticular Relationships, 181. — 3. Necessity for the Further Exclusion of Material 
Hostile to the Educational Aim, 181. — 4. Necessity for the Further Exclusion 
and Continual Rejection of All That is Not Useful to the Majority of Individuals 
Who Are Not Specialists, 183. — 5. All Material Must Be Rejected Which is 
Being Effectively Taught Outside the School, or Which Cannot Be Effectively 
Taught in the School, 187. 



CHAPTER VIII 

Application of the Test of Relative Worth from the Stand- 
point OF All Formal Self-activity Which is Indirectly 
Useful 191 

I. Application of the Test to Relationships Intended to Further Cumulative 
Impression, igi. — 2. Relative Worth from the Standpoint of Mere Remem- 
brance, 195. — 3. Genetic Conditions Determining Only for Optional Material, 
igS. — 4. Words the Most Useful Material from the Standpoint of Mere Re- 
membrance, 200. — 5. Application of the Test for Selection to Varying Apper- 
ception, 213. — 6. Application of the Test for Relative Value to General Disci- 
pline, 225. 



vi CONTENTS 

CHAPTER IX 

PAGE 

Application of the Test of Relative Worth to Specific , 
Discipline, with the Consequent Determination of a 
Cumulative and Dominating System, Both Directly and 
Indirectly Useful 237 

I. Specific Discipline as Essential to Formal Self-activity as to Direct 
Preparation and Specialization, 237. — 2. Application of the Test to Direct 
Preparation for the Various Phases of the Educational Aim, 239. — 3. Deter- 
mination of the Relative Worth of Specific Relationships Results in Specific 
System, 245. — 4. Application of the Test to Academic Organization, 260. — 5. 
The Reorganization of the Course of Study Into a Dynamic System of Essen- 
tially Useful Relationships, 267. — 6. Application of the Test to Specialization, 
271. — 7. Specialization in Portions of Mathematics a Necessary Preparation 
for Many Vocations, 274. — 8. Specialization in Some Modern Language 
Broadens Apperception ,Is Helpful to the Majority of Vocations, and Desirable 
from the Standpoint of Avocation, 276. — 9. Even Specialization in Avocation 
Determined by the Test of Relative Worth, 278. — 10. Only the Test for Rela- 
tive Worth Can Determine the Relative Part to Be Played by General Educa- 
tion and Specialization, 280. 

CHAPTER X 

The Continuity Necessary to a Cumulative and Dominating 
System to Be Ensured Primarily Through Direct Prep- 
aration and. Secondarily, Through Specialization 282 

I. From the Standpoint of Continuity Habit Must Be Considered in at 
Least Four Degrees of Complexity, 282. — 2. The Impracticability of Vocational 
Specialization as a Means to Continuity, 285. — 3. More Likelihood of Con- 
tinuity Through Academic Specialization Strengthened by Varying Voca- 
tional Motive, 286. — 4. Continuity Practicable and at the Same Time Most Use- 
ful Only Through the Progressive and Cumulative Organization of the Material 
Most Directly Useful to All, 289. — 5. Early Opportunity for Specialization 
Should Re- enforce the Continuity Based on Direct Preparation for Life in 
General, 290. — 6. The Specific Discipline Involved in Direct Preparation for 
Life Necessary to Increase the Probability of Usefulness of Every Form of 
Indirect Instruction, 292. — 7. The "Old" Education and the "New" Com- 
plementary, 294. — 8. Continuity and Concentration Through Specialization 
Must Supplement Direct Preparation for Lite in General and Be Related to 
It, 296. — 9. The Development of Education as a Science Necessary Both to 
Democracy and Christian Civilization, 298. 



FOREWORD 



If I had been writing wholly from the standpoint of edu- 
cational tradition, the title of this book would have been 
Democracy through Culture and Discipline. For the first 
step taken toward democratic education was to ensure in- 
telligent citizenship by making the culture and discipline, 
which in the past had been reserved for privileged social 
classes, accessible to the whole people through a system of 
free schools. Writing as I have done, wholly as an investi- 
gator who records in as logical order as he can the results of 
his inquiry, a truer title for my work as it reaches its comple- 
tion would be Culture and Discipline through Direct Prep- 
aration for Democracy. For from the standpoint of cul- 
ture and discipline as distinct from democracy, I have been 
forced to see that for the majority of individuals who do not 
continue to lead the life of academic specialists, no discipline 
can be lasting or culture continuing which is not closely 
related to every-day life. And to an education which is 
democratic only in its opportunity, I have gradually come to 
add education which is democratic, on the one hand, in its 
ideals, its subject matter, its organization and its method, and 
on the other, in compulsion which demands not only that 
each individual shall have through compulsory school at- 
tendance the rudiments of academic knowledge, but, through 
the compulsion of repetition, every detail of culture and dis- 
cipline essential to usefulness to the community and the 
state. 

That is, purely academic training, with its general informa- 
tion, general culture, and general discipline, has proved itself 



Vll 



VlU FOREWORD 

to be not only an uncertain preparation for citizenship, de- 
pendent for its own usefulness upon more direct preparation 
for life, but to depend even for its continuity as habit and 
system upon its relationship to the every-day experience of 
ordinary people. 

It is, after all, the fundamental changes which the last 
hundred years have made in the every-day experience of the 
masses that are responsible for the educational readjustment 
of which we are just becoming fully conscious. Not only 
democracy, but the transformation of industrial life, increas- 
ing leisure, a higher standard of living, the broadening of 
social service, and the almost inconceivable extension of the 
domain of human knowledge are compelling a different kind 
of education. More than this, as slowly but surely the com- 
pulsion of scientific determination is added to that of social 
readjustment, individual opinion in educational practice 
must yield to the truth laid bare by analysis, research, and 
experimentation, as tradition is yielding to changing life and 
civilization. 

Meanwhile, our national educational policy is being widely 
influenced by two classes of extremists — traditionalists, to 
whom a liberal education means a discipline and culture re- 
mote from life; and iconoclasts, to whom preparation for life 
is limited to a vocational training which has no time for gen- 
eral disciphne or culture. Not only is an open mind one of 
the highest products of civilization and education, but there 
is probably no field of investigation, and especially of read- 
justment, in which it is more difiicult to maintain it than in 
that of education itself. Not merely what is taught, but the 
method by which it is imparted, becomes a part of one's 
personality and tends to dominate it, if not through an ade- 
quate discipline, at least in point of view. As the life of a 
particular individual is crowned with success, the vocational 
training or the general education which prepared for it 
appears to him to be justified by the logic of experience itself, 
while the particular form of culture which he possesses, as it 
raises him above routine, becomes a part of his faith and his 



FOREWORD ix 

idealism. Indeed, a strong mind cannot be an open one if it 
is not also analytic. The traditionalist cannot be justly- 
called upon to surrender old beliefs as wholes which are, after 
all, partial truths, or to accept new ones as wholes which too 
often represent hasty generalizations as well as scientifically 
determined facts. Nor can the iconoclast see the partial 
truths in an old belief when he fails to see it in its parts, 
or tolerate criticisms of the new when he cannot discriminate 
between its generalizations and its facts. 

This is why, in a period of transition from a variety of 
deductive educational systems to education as an inductive 
science, it is so difficult for us to follow "the argument whither- 
soever it may lead." Fortunate it is for human progress 
that as educational science is beginning to analyze and ex- 
periment, philosophy is becoming pragmatic, culture more 
truly liberal, and experience expectant and receptive through 
the continual contributions of discovery and invention to the 
every-day life of the people. Whether or not each individual 
is able to meet readjustment with an open mind, the ulti- 
mate triumph of analysis, experimentation, and research 
is sure. 

The discussion which is to follow is not so much an at- 
tempted solution of the educational problem, as an effort to 
formulate it. It seeks to analyze the vague presuppositions 
and generalizations of current debate, and to apply to exist- 
ing theory and practice the definite facts and propositions 
upon which a multitude of partial or uncertain truths are 
collectively based. The result is not an assemblage of de- 
ductive conclusions, but a thousand and one specific problems 
which only experimentation and research can solve. Obvi- 
ously, if at each stage of the argument the reader is unable to 
follow the analysis, if he substitutes his accustomed ideas for 
tentative though cumulative conclusions on which further 
discussion is based, he will utterly fail to take the successive 
steps necessary to an intelligent comprehension of the prob- 
lem as a whole. At best, with an open mind, he can share 
the writer's hope that both tentative conclusions and the 



FOREWORD 



highly organized system of direct preparation which they 
appear to justify may soon be put to scientifically valid test. 
In the educational field, as elsewhere, the compulsion of 
science must be substituted for that of tradition and displace 
the individualism which, like that of Protagoras, still makes 
individual man the measure of all things. 



CULTURE DISCIPLINE AND DEMOCRACY 



CHAPTER I 

THE PRESENT STATUS OF CULTURE DISCIPLINE AND DIRECT 
PREPARATION FOR LIFE 

I. Conditions Which Have Resulted in a Reaction Toward 
Academic Specialization 

If not quite unknown to the mass of thinkers, at least in 
utter absence of that general interest which a realization of 
their consequences would call forth, two revolutionary tend- 
encies are becoming dominant in educational practice — a 
continually increasing demand for direct and specific train- 
ing for definite activities of life and a lessening confidence in 
the certainty and efficiency of formal discipline. This lack 
of popular interest is more remarkable from the fact that the 
present educational crisis is a direct and gradual develop- 
ment of the educational movement of the nineteenth century. 

The beginning of the century was marked by a many-sided- 
ness of achievement which widely extended the domain of 
human knowledge and broadened the range of human inter- 
ests. It was a period of successful exploration, discovery, 
and invention, of political revolution, and moral, religious, 
and social reform. As the revival of ancient learning stimu- 
lated sixteenth century scholars to the activities which con- 
stitute the Renaissance, so Australasia and the South Sea 
Islands, Harvey's circulation of the blood and 
Priestley's discovery of oxygen, the invention [^^^8^111 
of the spinning jenny, the steam engine and the knowledge 
locomotive, the rise of manufactures, the French at beginning 
Revolution and electoral reform, Wesleyanism, century, 
temperance societies, homes for the deaf and 
dumb, abolition, phrenology — these, and many equally 

11 



12 CULTURE DISCIPLINE AND DEMOCRACY 

potent factors in a changing civilization, united to compel 
a truer and fuller educational readjustment as yet in its 
beginning, in whose completion the Renaissance itself will 
become complete. In America the public school system was 
created. In England, after the failure of Lord Brougham's 
Commission to establish a national school system, the Society 
for the Diffusion of Useful Knowledge was formed, and, 
through Penny Encyclopedia and Penny Magazine, began its 
systematic and determined effort to give the new knowledge 
to the masses. Equally enthusiastic and persistent attempts 
were naturally made^to introduce it into the school curriculum. 
The elaborate course proposed in all seriousness by Jeremy 
Bentham, in which this enthusiasm had its culmination, 
must be presented in its entirety in order to show the quanti- 
tative extreme which was reached:^ 

Elementary Arts. — Reading, writing, arithmetic. 

First Stage (Age Seven). — Mineralogy, botany, zoology, 
geography, geometry (definitions only), history, chronol- 
Its press- ogy, drawing. 

ure upon Second Stage (Age Eight). — Same subjects, 

the school, ^-^j^ mechanics, hydrostatics, hydraulics, pneu- 
matics, acoustics, optics. Chemistry: mineral, vegetable, 
animal. Meteorology, magnetism, electricity, galvanism, 
balistics. Archaeology, statistics. English, Latin, Greek, 
French, and German grammars. 

Third Stage (Age Nine). — Subjects of previous stages and 
mining, geology, land-surveying, architecture, husbandry, 
including the theory of vegetation and gardening. 

Physical economics — i. e., the application of mechanics 
and chemistry to domestic management, involving "maximi- 
zation of bodily comfort in all its shapes, minimization of 
bodily discomfort in all its shapes," — biography. 

Fourth Stage (Age Ten). — Hygiastics (art of preserving 
and restoring health), comprising physiology, anatomy, 
pathology, nosology, dietetics, materia medica, prophy- 
lactics (art of warding off evils), surgery, therapeutics; 
zohygiastics (art of taking care of animals). 



CULTURE DISCIPLINE AND DEMOCRACY 13 

Phthisozoics (art of destroying noxious animals: vermin 
killing, rat catching, etc.). 

Fifth Stage (Age Eleven). — Geometry (with demonstra- 
tions), algebra, mathematical geography, astronomy. Tech- 
nology, or arts and manufactures in general. Bookkeeping, 
or the art of registration or recordation. Commercial book- 
keeping. Note-taking. 

To all this a certain Mr. Simpson adds: 

Sixth Stage (Age Twelve). — History, government, com- 
merce. Political economy. Philosophy of the human mind. 

It is this impossible scheme that is used by Joseph Payne 
to illustrate the fallacy that, because there is so much to be 
learned in the world, children must learn it all in school.^ 
It is absurd only when, in the light of the modern course of 
study, one thinks of the limitations and inefficiency of the 
early charity schools. When one turns to the course of 
study of the Winchesters and Etons for which it is intended, 
with the whole of boyhood and young manhood devoted to an 
equally quantitative study of Latin and of Greek, Jeremy 
Bentham's substitute does not appear quite so extraordinary. 

The actual defense of the traditional curriculum against 
the onslaught of the new knowledge was the inertia of school 
men trained through the old content, together with not a 
little of the religious prejudice which was so potent a factor 
in the defeat of Lord Brougham's reforms. It was not until 
the latter years of Mr. Spencer's life that the charge of irre- 
ligiousness, brought, for example, against Horace Mann and 
the Combes, was toned down to such an extent that he ex- 
pressed his surprise at its almost utter absence. 

The theoretical defense against a many-sided curriculum 
in the beginning and, as conservatism began to yield and 
religious prejudice softened, the only defense was its check 
the theory of formal discipline. It, too, reached by formal 
an extreme which perhaps contrasts itself most *^"^ ^^^' 
sharply with Jeremy Bentham's in Joseph Payne's insistence 
that "in order to train the mind usefully, concentration and 
not accumulation must be our guiding principle — in other 



14 CULTURE DISCIPLINE AND DEMOCRACY 

words, we must direct the most strenuous e^orts of our pupils 
to the complete and full comprehension of some one subject as an 
instrument of intellectual discipline.''^ Since this one sub- 
ject must itself be many-sided in the activities wliich it calls 
forth, and must be closely connected with human interests 
and feelings, Mr. Payne concentrated upon Latin, as opposed 
to mathematics or natural science. That is, in common with 
Thomas Arnold^ and W. T. Harris,^ he gave Latin prominence, 
not, with modern Hellenists, on account of a liberal culture 
remote from life, but because of a humanism and universality 
which make possible the many-sided relation to modern life, 
without which the habits fixed with the aid of concentration 
cannot be generally applied. 

Champions of formal discipline are not yet urging many- 
sidedness as necessary to the general application of the 

habits which constitute specific disciphne. On 
che^ck to ^^^ contrary, they are beginning to perceive that 
discipline, in failing to insist upon an extreme concentration, 
decreasing logically inevitable if discipline is to be given by 
^Qjj^ branches of knowledge taken as wholes, they 

ignored one condition fundamental to the fixed 
habits without which formal discipline is impossible. Mr. 
Payne himself necessarily prepared the way for a diversity 
fatal to concentration through a single formal subject by 
admitting that other subjects than Latin have disciplinary 
value, and must be included in so far as they do not interfere 
with concentration upon the subject selected as the main 
instrument of discipline.*^ A few years later Alexander Bain, 
with his keen power of analysis, pointed out in a general way 
the activities developed by each branch, and demonstrated 
once for all that Latin develops no activity which cannot be 
developed by some other subject of study .^ This left no 
effective defense against the individualism of genetic psy- 
chology which, re-enforcing that of Rousseau and later itself 
re-enforced by Herbartianism, appeared to give scientific 
sanction to the elective system. So to Latin and, in the 
secondary school at least, a critical study of EngHsh have 



CULTURE DISCIPLINE AND DEMOCRACY 15 

been added not only the modern languages, but the natural 
sciences and numerous other subjects, all justified, at least in 
part, on the plea of discipline, and all so ineffectively taught, 
from the disciplinary point of view, as to result in generally 
admitted failure. Hence, Woodrow Wilson's reference to the 
social sideshows that interfere with the main performance,^ 
and President Lowell's reactionary modification of the elect- 
ive system at Harvard. The former's most characteristic 
stand is for concentration on academic work in general 
through a lessening of distractions and a closer supervision 
of study; the latter's, for concentration through academic 
specialization. 

The recent recommendations of the Carnegie Foundation 
concerning college entrance requirements point in the latter 
direction — concentration on two or three subjects, , 

with free range in a variety of others.^ Professor concentra- 
Isaac Schwatt took a still more consistent and tion not the 
courageous step when he suggested before the ^^ ^tve. ^^' 
New England Association of Teachers of Mathe- 
matics that high school pupils who are not looking forward 
to specialization in some subject requiring applied mathe- 
matics, can be given the discipline peculiar to mathematics 
through a far more thorough study of arithmetic to the 
exclusion of algebra and geometry.^^ In short, the apparent 
but partial remedy of concentration through specialization 
is being seized upon without regard to its possible supple- 
ment or alternative — concentration through the selection .,. 
and equally systematic organization of material pre-eminent ^ 
in its direct usefulness to life in general. 

The attempt at discipline through at least the elementary 
study of a variety of subjects as systematic wholes, with its 
consequent lack of concentration, would not, per- 
haps, have resulted so disastrously had it not ^j^^ against 
been made in a period of reaction against mechan- formal 
ical memorizing. Since habit is the first stage memorizing 
of discipline, failure to repeat ideas and activities check. 
again and again in the unvarying sequences neces- 



l6 CULTURE DISCIPLINE AND DEMOCRACY 

sary to the formation of fixed habits is the immediate cause 
of a forgetfulness, for which too large a number of sequences 
is but a condition. One of the most contradictory fallacies 
into which teachers have been led in the effort to develop 
self-activity is insistence upon an immediate self-activity 
which refuses to utilize even a temporary imitation, verbatim 
repetition, or mechanical prompting, which may be the most 
direct and effective means to a self-activity truly independent 
and persistent. On the other hand, immediate self-activity, 
apperception, and interest, temporarily called forth through 
the stimulus of an intelligent teacher, will leave behind them 
pleasant impressions rather than discipline if the potentially 
most useful of the new associations have not been made 
definite by drill and the old ones more firmly fixed in the spe- 
cific relationships upon which their usefulness depends. 
Mechanical memorizing in unvarying relationships is as neces- 
sary to discipline and the independent exercise of rational 
activities as repetition in continually varying relationships is 
necessary to apperception and adequate knowledge. 

A third reason for failure has been overconfidence in the 
disciplinary efficiency of the method peculiar to a particular 
Neglect of branch of knowledge, to the common and some- 
pedagogical times arrogant exclusion of the pedagogical 
method a method through which it can be most economic- 
ally and certainly mastered. For this an equally 
arrogant pedagogy has been in part responsible. Until 
general pedagogical principles are analyzed into specific 
propositions that clearly apply to the details involved in the 
teaching of every branch, and the problems revealed by such 
application are solved by scientific experimentation and re- 
search, the failure resulting from the attempt to teach too 
much and inadequate memory drill will be made all the more 
inevitable by ineffective methods of instruction. From the 
standpoint of the formal discipline claimed for the abstract 
subject, as distinct from the specific discipline more or less 
adequately given, the chief pedagogic lack is a study of the 
conditions favorable to general discipline. 



CULTURE DISCIPLINE AND DEMOCRACY 17 

The culminating blunder of ail, possible only to thinkers 
bhnded by the point of view just discussed, is the assumption 
that the more remote a branch of knowledge from 
life, the better the means which it affords for from every- 
discipline. The assumption usually accompanies day life 
it that such subjects, through their remoteness, |f^^! *® *^°°" 
present greater difficulties and demand — and 
through their lack of connection with every-day distractions 
receive — greater concentration. Even granting this, it is 
necessary still further to assume that the resulting discipline 
once gained is so thorough that it can persist outside the 
school in the absence of the incidental and continual repeti- 
tions possible only to subject matters which are most closely 
related to life. With the specialist such study, though often 
specific and narrow, may constitute an exceptionally persist- 
ent discipline, because of the very fact that his specialty, 
remote from the every-day life of the mass, is connected with 
his own. In similar fashion, the specific discipline peculiar 
to any branch, a discipline which may never become formal 
or general, depends for its mere continuance upon the per- 
sistence with which its essential sequences and relationships 
are called to mind in the years that follow school life. In 
the case of students and pupils who are not specialists, with 
a discipline sought through too much subject matter, with 
inadequate memory drill in the absence of effective method, 
the conscious selection of relationships and sequences that 
do not occasionally recur in every-day life robs them of the 
last possibility of the continuance of habits which, if formed 
at all, have been bought too dear. 



2. The Lessening Confidence in the Theory of Formal 
Discipline Itself 

To this conspicuous failure of specific discipline, which 
could not but weaken confidence in the formal discipline to 
which it is a condition, and from which most educational 
2 



l8 CULTURE DISCIPLINE AND DEMOCRACY 

workers and students do not distinguish it, have been added 
serious doubts as to the theory of formal discipHne itself. 
Its first breakdown came v/hen the new psychology demon- 
strated that the human mind does not consist of faculties 
which can be trained into general usefulness. When the 
memory, the intellect, and the will were seen to be composites 
of specific activities and habits, formal discipline reduced itself 
to the operation of a habit in fields of knowledge and experi- 
ence other than that in which it is acquired. As yet the mass 
of thinkers have been little influenced by tliis new viewpoint 
of the specialist. Although when once familiar with it they 
will be less impressed by the enumeration of particular activ- 
ities in so-called disciplinary subjects, which ma.y or may not 
become habitual or may or may not be carried over, they as 
yet are more or less under the influence of the grandiloquent 
plea that the study of mathematics or the languages trains 
the human intellect, and, therefore, constitutes the most 
efficient preparation for life. 

To expert students of education the results of experimental 
investigations made by Professors Thorndike, Bagley, and 
others, tentative though they are, have, on the whole, been a 
still more disturbing factor. The mere fact that a particular 
group of mathematically trained individuals compared un- 
favorably in exact judgments with a group which had not 
been mathematically trained, or that the habitual proportion 
of neat papers in arithmetic did not result in neat papers in 
other school subjects, is perhaps no more convincing than a 
statistical investigation which shows that a larger proportion 
of graduates of the old classical course at a certain college 
have been successful in life than of those trained in the vari- 
ous parallel courses included in the modern curriculum. But 
the champions of formal discipline have been placed on the 
/ defensive, and the great majority of educational thinkers 
/ who are at present dominating educational theory and influ- 
^- encing educational practice have at least gone so far as to say, 
*'You may learn to swim by learning to walk, but why not 
learn to swim by learning to swim?" 



CULTURE DISCIPLINE AND DEMOCRACY 19 

3. The Constantly Increasing Strength of the Organized Demand 
for Direct Preparation for Life 

The popularity of Herbartianism in America has had not 
a little to do with the development of this state of mind. A 
many-sided mental activity may result from the adequate 
study of one or two formal subjects, but the many-sided 
interest dear to the Herbartian can result only from a many- 
sided course of study. All this, however, is but one phase of 
the positive factor which with irresistible force is storming 
the weakened defences of formal discipline — the organized 
demand through propaganda, legislation, and confident, 
though not as yet convincingly successful, practice for direct 
preparation for each specific phase of life through the teach- 
ing of facts and activities in the relationships which definitely 
and certainly further it. 

It is substituting for the maxim, that preparation for col- 
lege is preparation for life, the equally epigrammatic proposi- 
tion that preparation for life should prepare for college. In 
place of first attempting to form the man and then the citizen, 
it insists that in forming the citizen directly and efficiently 
equipped for public service, specific right action, healthful 
living, industrial efficiency, and the ever-increasing period of 
leisure, it is most certainly forming the man. A step farther, 
and it will urge that if the habits peculiar to a specialty di- 
rectly useful to the few, may become indirectly useful to the 
many by being carried over into the ordinary fields of knowl- 
edge and experience, it is more pedagogic and economic to 
teach them through reorganized courses of study and more 
effective method, in the relationships which make them 
directly and certainly useful to the many, with a view to 
carrying them over to the specialty in whose narrower sub- 
ject matter they will be useful to the few. 

Each succeeding report of the United States Commissioner 
of Education brings to light new organizations — local, state, 
national, and international — for the furtherance of moral and 
religious instruction, personal and public hygiene, patriotic 



20 CULTURE DISCIPLINE AND DEMOCRACY 

citizenship, and manual or industrial training. Especially 

with this latter end in view, state commissions have been 

appointed, state departments of education reorganized, large 

appropriations voted, text-books written, and 

The closer courses of study revised. In the hiejh schools of 
relating of i i • • i i 

academic Pittsburgh and other cities botany or zoology, as 

subject fiYst year electives, have given place to a "general 

^g ®^ ^ science," in which certain portions of physics, 
chemistry, and all the natural sciences are com- 
bined to furnish the facts and principles most closely related 
to every-day experienced^ Even the term "general mathe- 
matics" is creeping into use. The high schools in Berkeley, 
California, and Chelsea, Massachusetts, recognize as part 
of their curriculum instrumental music taught at home, if the 
quality of the instruction is approved by the supervisor of 
music.^^ A well-known university allows one unit of credit 
each for editorship and the management of college periodicals. 
The University of Wisconsin has taken what is probably the 
most extreme step of all in recognizing forty credits in the 
theory of physical education and athletics toward the one 
hundred and twenty required for the A. B. degree.^^ 

4. Increasing Willingness for Readjustment on the Part of 
Colleges and Universities 

As yet, even in the face of this tendency, many colleges 
and universities are continuing to require the traditional type 
of preparation, including fixed requirements in mathematics 
and the languages. The University of Chicago, however, is 
leading the way to a more general recognition in college en- 
trance requirements of subjects essential to general prepara- 
tion for life, and the Carnegie Foundation, after attempting 
to gain a consensus of expert opinion, recognizes both the 
reaction toward formal discipline and the demand for direct 
preparation for life by recommending more or less superficial 
examination in a variety of subjects, combined with an in- 
creasingly severe examination in mathematics and a foreign 
language.^ This will probably be the present answer to the 



CULTURE DISCIPLINE AND DEMOCRACY 21 

questionnaire of the special committee of New York High 

School Teachers, which has been seeking to determine to what 

extent higher institutions of learning in the East are willing 

to follow the lead of the West.^^ 

"May we ask," says their questionnaire, "what, in your 

opinion, would be the objections, if any, to the acceptance 

by your college of the graduates of the high schools 

of New York City? Such a definition of entrance Q^estion- 

11 1 11 r naire of the 

requirements would secure to the college a four New York 

years' preparatory course and would enable the High School 

high school to perform its function as a tax-sup- As^ociatfon 

ported institution. Under the present method 

of defining entrance requirements, students who have not 

completed our courses of study repeatedly gain admission 

to college, often to the weakening of both college and high 

school. 

"If this departure seem.s too radical, may we call your 
attention to the following statements, and recommend the 
modifications in present entrance requirements which seem to 
us most urgent? There are seven distinct lines of work which 
we believe essential to a well-rounded high school course; to 
wit: language, mathematics, history and civics, science, 
music, drawing, and manual training. Girls must be taught 
household science and art. Moreover, we believe that the 
twentieth century demands that the high schools should not 
cast all students in the same mold; that the amount of science 
and manual training which is sufiicient for one student is 
utterly inadequate for another; and that a training for busi- 
ness may be given in the high school which will be as cultural 
and as respectable as any other course. To enable the high 
schools to adapt secondary education to the varying needs of 
different students in such a manner as to meet the diverse 
demands of the professions, of industry, and of commerce, 
progress seems to us to require — 

"(a) The reduction in the number of so-called 'required' 
subjects, together with 

^'(b) The recognition of all standard subjects as electives. 



22 CULTURE DISCIPLINE AND DEMOCRACY 

"The specified entrance requirement of two foreign lan- 
guages, the meager electives in science, and the absence of 
recognition for drawing, music, household science and art, 
shopwork, commercial branches, and civics and economics, 
constitute the chief difficulty. 

"We should like to see it possible for a student upon enter- 
ing the high school to choose Latin or German or French; to 
confine his work in foreign language, during his high school 
course, to one such language in case the remainder of his time 
is required for other subjects; and to find at the end of his 
high school course that he has met the foreign language 
requirements of whatever college he may choose to enter. 
We should like to see no discrimination against Latin for the 
course leading to the B. S. degree, so that students choosing 
any language may enter the B. S. course. 

"We should like to see the following subjects recognized 
by college entrance credits: 

"Music, I unit; mechanical and freehand drawing, each 
J to I unit; joinery, pattern making, forging, machine-shop 
practice, each J to i unit; household chemistry, botany, 
zoology, physiography, applied physics, and advanced 
chemistry, each i unit; modern history, i unit; civics and 
economics, each J to i unit; household science and art, 2 
units; and commercial geography, commercial law, stenog- 
raphy and typewriting, elementary bookkeeping, advanced 
bookkeeping, and accounting, each J to i unit. 

"A recent study of entrance requirements shows that many 
colleges are already requiring only one foreign language for 
admission, and that many of the above subjects have received 
recognition." 

The majority of the answers received from the colleges 
were favorable to these propositions, the most antagonistic 
being that of President Emeritus Eliot. The most common 
objection advanced was against the reduction in language re- 
quirements. For example. President Garfield, of Williams 
College, wrote, "So far from abandoning the work in language, 
I should much prefer that students entering college were 



CULTURE DISCIPLINE AND DEMOCRACY 23 

through with the beginners' work in Latin and both modern 
languages, or with Latin and Greek and one modern language, 
but I realize that, at the present time, it would appear to 
put upon the school too great a burden to have accomplished 
so much." Woodrow Wilson took a similar position, both 
on the ground that a command of a variety of languages was 
highly useful and that it is most readily developed in child- 
hood. 

5. Readjustment Must Not Be Left to Consensus, hut Must 
Be Determined by Scientific Research 

Obviously, if readjustment is left to consensus, the result- 
ing curriculum will be a parallelogram of conflicting forces 
which will probably involve more complete domination of 
the college by the high school than the high school has ever 
been dominated by the college. The solution of so fundamen- 
tal a problem must not be left to consensus. Here as else- 
where science must intervene; not a pedagogy all aglitter 
with generalities — a peacock plumage borrowed from other 
branches of learning — but an independent science, with 
problems which other sciences may suggest, but which it alone 
can solve. It is high time that in the spiritual domain upon 
which the future of individuality, the family, democracy, 
and religion ultimately depends, should be introduced the 
same analytic and experimental methods that have given us 
not only atomic weights, electrons, and axis-cylinder processes, 
but, through invention and manufacture, complex modern life 
itself. It is strange that education is almost the last of all 
the great branches of human endeavor to accept the full in- 
heritance of the Renaissance, and to pass from the unity 
and compulsion of tradition and authority through the pro- 
gressive but disorganizing dominance of individualism into 
the more stable unity and more certain compulsion of uni- 
versally valid fact checked by inductive experimentation 
and research. 

Here, as elsewhere, scientific method must isolate and 
vary single factors, choose between alternatives, determine 



24 CULTURE DISCIPLINE AND DEMOCRACY 

and count relationships. Self-activity must be analyzed 
into factors, of which discipline and many-sidedness are only 
seemingly antagonistic parts. Each phase of the educational 
aim must be analyzed into specific ends, and the whole range 
of human knowledge and experience searched through and 
through for the details which definitely and certainly further 
each in the most many-sided relationships and with the 
greatest likelihood of recurrence in every-day life. When 
included in the educational content they must be organized, 
not merely with a view to the indirect furtherance of these 
ends through general knowledge and culture, academic habits 
and general discipline, but in such fashion that, whether 
facts or activities, they will, through gradual accumulation 
and reorganization, be definitely and certainly associated 
with all others that tend to the specific aim upon whose fur- 
therance their direct usefulness depends. Method must be 
so scientifically determined that there shall be a minimum of 
waste in the educational process. The groupings most 
effective for retention and for thought, the form of presenta- 
tion best adapted to the thing that is to be accomplished, the 
extent of gradation necessary to self -progress, the length of 
the interval that can be allowed to elapse before review, these 
and a multitude of other factors must be measured and com- 
pared. 

The formulation of these problems should not be left to 
individual enthusiasts or local effort alone. Just as certainly 
as there is both a local and a national side to representative 
government, is there both a local and a national side to the 
education that should prepare for representative govern- 
ment. The functions of the United States Bureau of Educa- 
tion should be so extended that it can lead in the necessary 
research.^^ 

6. Direct Preparation for Life More Certain than General Dis- 
cipline, and Necessary to Make it Useful 

Meanwhile, with all of its present inefficiency, checked as 
its operation is by the absence of the analysis, experimenta- 



CULTURE DISCIPLINE AND DEMOCRACY 25 

tion, and research, without which it cannot be most effective, 
the advantage of direct over indirect preparation for life lies 
in the readily apparent fact that it is specific and therefore 
certain. It is not direct unless it is specific. On the other 
hand, any effort at general training is ineffective which falls 
short of habit, which fails to make habit continuing, or which 
fails to carry it over into the fields upon which even its indirect 
usefulness depends. More than this, even should the aca- 
demically well-disciplmed man as a result become more gen- 
erally efficient, in the absence of the direct training which 
makes certain his good citizenship his very efficiency may 
make him a greater menace to the well being of the com- 
munity and the state. Direct instruction, supplementing 
general training and supplemented by it, finally comes to have 
the irresistible form of accumulation. Fact added to fact, 
activity to activity, impression to impression, month after 
month and year after year, must in the end achieve their 
common aim. The "line upon line, and precept upon precept, 
here a Httle, there a little" of Isaiah, which made the Jew a 
true Jew, must sooner or later make the American a true 
American. 

7. Either Academic or Vocational Specialization Without 
Direct Preparation for Life Hostile Both to Culture and 
Democracy 
What makes the present an educational crisis is the grave 
danger that, in a period of educational readjustment so rapid 
and apparent, a lessened confidence in general training and 
general culture, with a growing demand for direct instruc- 
tion, may result in two almost equally unhappy extremes — 
a professional specialization, which ignores general training 
and culture, and through reaction, an academic specializa- 
tion, which, whether disciplinary or cultural, refuses to relate 
itself to life. The effect of the former is already apparent, 
first, in the numerous vocational schools which, requiring an 
inadequate cultural preparation either through high school 
or college, devote themselves to training for vocational phases 



26 CULTURE DISCIPLINE AND DEMOCRACY 

of life; and, second, in the colleges where the cultural courses 
and the specialized academic courses, which are falsely called 
cultural, are being crowded to the wall by electives or group 
electives which, because they are preparatory to vocation, 
are stigmatized as utilitarian even when as cultural as those 
which are purely academic. 

The natural result is a reaction within the college, v/hich, 
failing to see that both culture and life require many-sided 
Direct knowledge, confuses preparation for life with prep- 

preparation aration for vocation, and demands an academic 

for life con- ^^j^cation that is not related to life, in place of 
fused with 1 • n ^1 

mere prep- demandmg a many-sided course that is ail the 

aration for more cultural and disciplinary because it is re- 
vocation, j^^g^ ^^ j^.f^^ P^j. example, Dean West, after 

asserting that the proposed Graduate College for Princeton 
*'is in spirit and substance an institution for humanizing 
knowledge in the field of the higher liberal studies," proceeds 
to characterize the "half truth of ^service,' the doctrine that 
only knowledge of obvious use is worth having," as follows: 
"Under this notion historical, social, and pohtical studies 
come to be pursued as a kind of 'contemporary topics' of live 
interest; the study of literature, even of our own, is narrowed 
to the most recent periods, thus shutting off depth of back- 
ground; philosophy descends into the nursery of 'child psy- 
chology,' and the great fundamental sciences are neglected 
except in their most practical applications."^^ Obviously, 
this somewhat limited characterization of the directly useful 
is not intended to apply to graduate schools, but to high 
schools and colleges. Indeed, the recommendations of the 
three Amherst graduates of the class of 1885, so favorably 
reviewed by Mr. Roosevelt in The Outlook, ^^ would result in 
precisely the independent "republica litteraria" that Dean 
West considers ideal. They urge that a wholly academic 
institution shall be created, in which the classical course shall 
be modified by some addition to science, and taught by the 
best qualified instructors that adequate compensation can 
attract, to a limited number of students admitted by compet- 



CULTURE DISCIPLINE AND DEMOCRACY 27 

itive examination. There is room for a graduate school in 
which a broadly humanistic training in the higher branches 
is substituted for intensive research in some narrow field of 
knowledge, if, before its students become humanists, they 
have been given the direct training for life in all of its many- 
sidedness, which should precede every sort of specialization. 
But heaven help democracy and culture if future citizens 
must choose between a professional training that excludes 
culture and the culture dreaded by old Benjamin Rush when 
he asserted: 

"The study of the Latin and Greek languages is improper 
in the present state of society and government in the United 
States. While Greek and Latin are the only avenues to 
science, education will always be confined to a few people. 
It is only by rendering knowledge universal that a republican 
form of government can be preserved in our country .... 
Men are generally most proud of those things that do not 
contribute to the happiness of themselves or others. Useful 
knowledge generally humbles the mind, but learning, like 
fine clothes, feeds pride, and thereby hardens the human 
heart."i9 

Education for the highest citizenship in a republic demands, 
as Mr. Roosevelt points out, the addition to "the ordinary 
and usually more necessary form of training" that is purely 
commercial of another "which should be undergone simply 
for the sake of learning and for the benefit of the state." 
This may be found in Dean West's Graduate School, and 
is found here and there in others where academic special- 
ization has not been carried so far as to produce the 
"logician" and the "rhetorician," who five centuries after 
Montaigne are more likely, after all, to be gentlemen than 
citizens. 

But in place of the new Amherst, unless it, too, becomes 
a higher school, there must be, both preparatory to the 
period of specialization, whether professional or academic, 
and paralleling it throughout, a variety of education which 
will directly train for moral and healthful living, social and 



28 CULTURE DISCIPLINE AND DEMOCRACY 

civic service, the phases of industrial life common to all in- 
dividuals and such employment of leisure as is not devoted 
to the specialized culture peculiar to an academic group. 

^ For so broad has the sum total of humanistic 

Even aca- 
demic spe- knowledge become — knowledge that is humanistic 

cialization through its relationship to many-sided modern 

fere with' ^^^^' ^^ ^^^^ ^^ ^^ ^^^^ ^^ Greece and Rome — that 
general cul- there has come to be specialization in culture itself. 
ture. ^j^(^ j-jjg Amherst plan represents specialized cul- 

ture that is no truer and infinitely less democratic than the 
sum total of directly useful knowledge and activity, which, 
while not connected with wage earning or in any other sense 
commercial, would constitute a social bond for all classes of 
educated individuals. So long as the knowledge which is a 
common possession, either of a particular social group or the 
whole of educated society, has a many-sidedness that is hu- 
manistic and a means to the aesthetic, it is cultural whether its 
many-sidedness is related to modern or to ancient life. Pre- 
mature specialization, whether professional, academic, or 
subjective, is equally hostile both to general culture and to 
preparation for life. By premature subjective specializa- 
tion is meant the misleading many-sidedness of a free elect- 
ive system which, on the plea of adaptation to individuality, 
excludes much that all students should possess in common, 
whether as part of a common culture or as a means to the 
direct preparation for a common life from which a common 
culture can result. 

Obviously, any attempt on the part of the formal disciplin- 
ists to make discipline effective through concentration upon 
two or three branches may constitute a menace both to gen- 
eral culture and to many-sided preparation for life. In the 
case of the new Amherst, academic specialization would 
strongly tend to diminish, or at least to narrow, general cul- 
ture. The problem which here becomes apparent is the ex- 
tent to which a many-sided course of study at each stage of 
education necessarily excludes specialization, subjective, 
academic, and vocational. 



CULTURE DISCIPLINE AND DEMOCRACY 29 

8. The Mutual Interdependence of Direct Preparation for Life 
and General Discipline 

Before it can be discussed, it is well to lay down the 
proposition that while direct preparation for life, on account 
of its specific and therefore certain realization of 
the educational aim, must be given primary place, ^^^®*^* p^^P" 
indirect preparation through general knowledge adequate in 
and discipline is too economical a factor to be the abserxce 
ignored. Potentially, there is more economy in discfpirne. 
a habit or relationship which may be generally 
applied than in a specific activity. The advantage of the 
specific activity lies in its certainty. If its general applica- 
tion is made as certain, or even highly probable, its useful- 
ness is multiplied. The fact that general discipline has not 
been commonly attained is no reason why it cannot be. 
Toward its achievement, however, concentration, whether 
through specialization or through effective pedagogical 
method upon the most directly useful subject matter in the 
relationships which make it useful, is only the first step. 
More than this, specific and general discipline are not the 
only forms of self-activity which certainly figure as means 
to the development of independent and useful individuality. 
The first step toward a solution of the general educational 
problem, that does not represent a mere resultant of conflict- 
ing opinions and theories, is an analysis of self-activity into 
all forms in which it tends to develop permanent and inde- 
pendent right action. Perhaps such analysis may show that 
culture, discipline, and direct preparation for life are not 
mutually exclusive, but, on the contrary, supplementary and 
interdependent. 



CHAPTER II 

AN ANALYSIS OF "FORMAL DISCIPLINE" INTO ESSENTIAL 
PHASES OF FORMAL SELF-ACTIVITY — INCLUDING GEN- 
ERAL DISCIPLINE 

I. The Aim of Education Not Self -activity, hut Useful Self- 

activity 

While, as pointed out by Dr. Harris, psychologically all 
activity of the self is self-activity,^'^ self -activity as the edu- 
Self-activity cational aim means useful self-activity, as inde- 
need not be pendent and intelligent as possible, in contrast 
imme late. ^-^j^ ^^^^.^ yej-j^atim memorizing and recollection, 
sensational interest or attention, and mechanical imitation. 
It does not follow, however, that the act of learning — the 
method by which self-activity is developed — should never 
utilize unintelligent memorizing, interest or imitation, but 
rather that when they are used they should lead as directly 
as possible to more independent self-activity. The extent 
to which they should be utilized in a given case consti- 
tutes a series of important problems in educational method 
to which attention will be directed later in the discussion. 
One of the most absurd and yet hopeful blunders of the con- 
scientious teacher, dominated by the fallacy that all activity 
on the part of the learner should be self-activity, is the effort 
to question forgetful children into the recollection of a fact 
that should be told them, or into the doing of something 
that should be shown them. "What is the capital of France? 
Can't you think? It begins with a P. What kind of 
plaster did we use the other day?" Small wonder if "self- 
activity" responds with ''porous" in place of "Paris." Self- 
activity is the ultimate end of education, its crowning achieve- 
ment, rather than an exclusive means which must be invari- 
ably used in every stage of instruction. 

30 



CULTURE DISCIPLINE AND DEMOCRACY 31 

Closely allied to this fallacy is another equally fundamental, 
the assumption that an immediate self-activity, dependent 
upon the stimulus of a live teacher, satisfies the j^q^q 
educational aim. Dr. Harris has paid his respects temporary 
to it in condemning what he seemed to regard as seif-actmty 
a necessary misuse of the oral instruction which satisfy the 
first Horace Mann, and still more influentially educational 
Colonel Parker, accepted as the chief means to self- *^"^* 
activity: ^'Oral instruction is constantly liable to destroy the 
self-activity of the pupil — that is to say, the very merit claimed 
for it is the one that it least accomplishes. The pupil 
listens to the teacher's living voice. The first impressions 
are all he gets, even if he takes notes; it requires time to 
reflect. The pupil is dragged from one point to another 
without fully digesting either. . . . He does not acquire the 
habit of regular systematic study, even though he may foster 
brilliant, flashy habits of mind."^^ 

Dr. Harris is right in so far as he anathematizes the ex- 
clusive development of merely temporary activities which, 
being dependent upon the immediate activity of the teacher, 
do not appear to be self-activity at ail. The modern recita- 
tion is too often like the circus procession. The pupils are 
mentally alert because they are interested, in place of being 
interested because they are self-active. They thrill at the 
lady and the tiger, listen to their teacher's steam piano, and 
follow the clowns and dromedaries whithersoever they may 
lead. But after a while the procession has passed by. Has 
anything permanent and useful been left behind? 

One sort of permanent self-activity, whose highly potential 
value has been too largely ignored as a factor in life and in 
education, almost invariably results — impression. 
The vague and intangible feeling that sometimes tional inad- 
rises to emotion, based less on the few things equacy of 

we remember than on the myriad we have for- "^^^ue im- 

-^ pression. 

gotten, made stronger and stronger as it is re- 
enforced by successive experiences involving every possible 
form of activity, but all resulting in the same impression, 



32 CULTURE DISCIPLINE AND DEMOCRACY 

may in the end become an ideal, a point of view, a permanent 
interest which constitutes character and determines action. 
The longing for home, the attitude of labor toward capital 
and of capital toward labor, love of country, the fear of 
strong drink, even reverence for deity itself, result far less 
from definite recollection, specific habits, or general discipline 
than from the cumulative, and in the end the overwhelming, 
force of a thousand and one petty forgotten impressions 
which unitedly tend to a common end. 

The temporary self-activity, dependent upon the daily 
inspiration of the teacher, must not take the place of other 
Usefulness essential forms of self-activity necessary to inde- 
of emotional pendent and useful development, for some of 
centers. which, by the way, oral instruction is indispen- 
sable. In itself, temporary self-activity constitutes but a 
highly efficient means to impression which becomes individual 
and permanent. Its usefulness depends upon the centers to 
which, through accumulation, the impression attaches itself, 
the vaguest and most general among them being the school. 
Love of school may be as playful as the love of the "magic 
ring" so delightfully described by Kenneth Graham, and, to 
use President Wilson's figure, attract to the side shows rather 
than to the main tent, but if useful in no other way, it is 
worth while. 

Owing to the anthropomorphic tendency of children, 
pointed out by Bain in his criticism of "natural punishment, "^^ 
love of school will often coincide with love of teacher. Im- 
pression, however, is also a means to interest in school activi- 
ties, in branches of study, in specific phases of the educational 
aim, and in the fundamental forms of self-activity essential 
to the mastery of all. 

No development of self-activity, in the shape of "interest- 
ing" lessons in which pupils have much to do or to say, is 
useless. It must not, however, be paraded as a pleasant 
short cut to education, or, through its apparent efficiency, 
crowd out other fundamental forms of self-activity. The 
aim of education is not self-activity, but useful self -activity; 



CULTURE DISCIPLINE AND DEMOCRACY 33 

not necessarily self-activity that is immediate, but that 
which is persistent and sure, without either excluding or 
being excluded by that which, burning brightly for a moment, 
leaves behind it the same vague pleasureableness as a drift- 
wood fire or a sunshiny day. 

2. The Necessity for Distinguishing the Educational or 

Formal Phases of Self-activity from Its Psychological 
Forms 

At the very outset, then, it is necessary to distinguish 
between the various forms of self-activity that are educational 
in the sense of being essential to the development and the 
right use of all kinds of self-activity — that is, between the 
various forms of self -activity pedagogically considered, as 
distinct from the various kinds of self-activity psychologically 
considered. Much confusion has resulted from, if not an 
unavoidable, at least a very natural interchange of pedagog- 
ical and psychological terms, or the use of the same terms 
for pedagogical and psychological conceptions. The psy- 
chologist would have avoided much vexation of spirit if he 
had left "apperception" to the pedagogue, while the Her- 
bartian has had reason to mourn over the fact that "interest" 
is a highly elastic means to psychological and hence to peda- 
gogical expression. The present discussion does not concern 
itself with such phases of mental activity as judgment, 
imagination, feeling, and will, but with forms of self-activity 
by which they are to be usefully developed, and through 
which the right relationships necessary to their useful exer- 
cise must be brought about. 

3. The Five Educational or Formal Phases of Self -activity that 

Can Be Distinguished Through the Distinct Kinds of 
Relationships from Which They Result 

Obviously, then, these fundamental forms must be dis- 
tinguished from each other through the distinct kinds of 
relationships from which they result. An idea or an activity 
is not useful in itself, but through its recurrence in a relation- 
3 



34 CULTURE DISCIPLINE AND DEMOCRACY 

ship which furthers some phase of the educational aim. In 
the case of impression, relationships, most of which are evan- 
escent, accumulate about some central idea or activity. 
Their sum-total is a feeling which is probably in part identical 
in its basis with Kiilpe's "direct recognition,"-^ but whose 
educational significance lies in its rendering the common idea 
or activity with which they are associated certainly and per- 
manently as attractive or unattractive as may be useful. 
The relationships themselves are improbable of recall — the 
forgotten knowledge and experience which make up most of 
life in school and out. 

On the contrary, mere remembrance is based upon the vary- 
ing and individual relationships which happen for a time to 
hold an idea or an activity in mind and through which it may 
be recalled. They will, for the most part, differ with indi- 
vidual learners, and constitute partial, accidental, and even 
false concepts, no matter how patiently instruction has sought 
to ensure common and adequate knowledge. Their sum total 
is information, the knowledge that is power, because it is a 
mass of memory and apperceiving centers which not only 
prevent ideas and activities from sinking to the level of for- 
gotten knowledge, but serve as a means of retaining and 
classifying new experiences that make information more 
adequate. 

Varying apperception, the third phase of self -activity, is 
based upon many-sidedness of relationship. Through it, 
an idea retained in one or more relationships is made recallable 
in a continually increasing number of relationships. These 
relationships may be as individual, accidental, and non-essen- 
tial, as those on which mere remembrance is based — their 
function being to ensure variation in mental content, and, 
through accumulation, both completeness of knowledge and 
the domination of specific groups or systems of ideas. 

The fourth phase of formal self-activity is specific disci- 
pline, not merely in the sense of the system peculiar to a par- 
ticular academic subject, but as including all habits and groups 
of habits. Through it an idea is certainly and permanently 



CULTURE DISCIPLINE AND DEMOCRACY 35 

recalled in a definite relationship or group of relationships. 
It includes the whole gamut of invariable relationships, from 
the simple habits and complexes of habits useful in direct 
preparation for life or within an academic branch, through 
those necessary to general discipline, to the completest 
possible interrelation of all habits that dominate life and 
character, whether as a result of experience or instruc- 
tion. 

The fifth and last phase of formal self-activity is general 
discipline — the carrying over of a habit to a field of experience 
other than that in w^hich it is developed. It must be sharply 
distinguished from the old "formal discipline" which, through 
the development of mental ''faculties," was supposed to en- 
sure all forms of mental development. It is neither a "gen- 
eral habit" nor the inevitable result of the study of "formal" 
or "disciplinary" subjects, but certainly results only when a 
habit, with a stimulus general enough to be carried over into 
various fields, is certainly associated with the conditions 
favorable to its being carried over. Dominant among these 
are not only specific discipline itself, but the cumulative im- 
pression, mere remembrance and varying apperception which 
the old formal discipline ignored. 

4. Distinction Between Direct and Indirect Furtherance of the 

Educational Aim 

Of these five forms of educational self-activity, only two — ■ 
impression and specific discipline — are based upon the direct 
and specific relationships that alone can be made certainly 
useful. The habits resulting from experience are, and the 
impressions may be, specific and certain, but not necessarily 
useful. On the other hand, no relationships are certainly 
useful unless they specifically, and hence directly, further 
some phase of the educational aim. It is obviously the func- 
tion of instruction to make certain the specific relationships 
giving rise to habits and impressions essential to the direct 
furtherance of each phase. More than this, as will be later 



36 CULTURE DISCIPLINE AND DEMOCRACY 

demonstrated, specific and certain relationships are as essen- 
tial to useful remembrance, apperception, and general dis- 
cipline as the varying relationships of apperception are 
necessary to the multiplied usefulness of specific discipline. 
Mere remembrance, varying apperception, and general 
discipline, while not certainly useful, tremendously multiply 
the usefulness of the specific relationships which are. 

The educational aim, then, is realizable through five forms 
of self-activity — directly and certainly through specific 
discipline and impression, and indirectly and potentially 
through mere remembrance, var3dng apperception, and 
general discipline. The problem of correctly apportioning 
the time available for instruction, between specific discipline 
and the indirect furtherance of the aim, belongs to method. 
In its solution three facts are fundamental — first, the primary 
importance of specific discipline not only in itself, but as a 
condition to indirectly useful self-activity; second, the limited 
number of specific relationships so essential that they must 
be made certain; and third, the limited time which, from the 
standpoint of attention and fatigue, can be effectively spent 
in memory drill. 

A somewhat more detailed discussion of each of these five 
forms of educational self-activity will make clear their inter- 
relationship and demonstrate their interdependence. 

5. Cumulative Impression, a Directly Useful Phase of Formal 

Self-activity 

While in a school where instruction is carried on by a 
teacher intelligent enough to be misled by the will-o'-the- 
wisp of immediate and temporary interest, edu- 
knmediate nation may become too nearly a passing show, 
and tern- in which impression for the most part narrows 
porary itself to a love of teacher or of school, other forms 

educational. ^^ educational self-activity will be present, and 
impressions will be usefully associated with 
other things than school. In fact, precisely the same type 



CULTURE DISCIPLINE AND DEMOCRACY 37 

of instruction that predominantly results in mere impression, 
also fosters varying remembrance and apperception. In this 
it is educational as far as it goes, but only indirectly so. It 
fails to develop specific discipline. Failing to result in specific 
discipline, and consequently in general discipline, even its 
indirect furtherance of the aim is inadequate. 

This combination of variable impression, remembrance, 
and apperception constitutes what W. H. Payne was accus- 
tomed to call the "tonic" value of education.^^ If developed 
at the expense of discipline, its finished product is the indi- 
vidual justly referred to by Dean West as educated but not 
intelligent.^^ 

Assuming that impression is developed with due regard 

to the other forms of educational self-activity, the chief 

danofer is that it will not be so centered and _ 

° , , ... . , Impression 

accumulated as to aid m ensurmg the perma- can operate 

nent viewpoints, ideals, and motives essential to against the 

the various phases of the educational aim. The ^. ^^^^^^^^^ 

. . . aim. 

cumulative impressions left behind by the school 

work may and should result in permanent interest in various 
branches of study. But they must involve something more 
than a love of school or even of the academic subjects that 
are taught there. In fact, a teacher may leave behind him 
impressions that result in love for him and respect for his 
ideals without developing the love for essential school sub- 
jects at all. One of Mr. Quick's old Cranleigh boys, after 
stating that all his subsequent life had been ''stayed by his 
kindly hand and cheered by his kindly voice," goes on to say, 
"I was also in Mr. Quick's class, though for what subject or 
subjects I have forgotten. "^^ 

By far the most important results of the impressions 
made certain by the school are the ideals, the viewpoints, 
the attitudes of mind, and the tendencies that directly 
further the details, which together constitute the various 
specific phases of the educational aim. Just what these 
details are, analysis of the various phases must determine. 
For example, it is highly essential to the furtherance of the 



^8 CULTURE DISCIPLINE AND DEMOCRACY 

aim that the form of self-activity now being discussed as 
impression should play its part in developing faith in divine 
providence, determined opposition to anything which 
menaces the public health, an earnest belief in the doctrine 
of equal rights as opposed to special privilege, or any other 
detail necessary to right living, good health, industrial effi- 
ciency, social service, good citizenship, and the proper em- 
ployment of leisure. Conscious effort in the formal educa- 
tional process to make impressions provoke interest in such 
details has of necessity been occasional and limited, in the 
absence of the analysis which alone can determine what 
details are necessary. At the worst, the cumulative force of 
impression is used against the school, or, through force of 
external experience, in favor of activities that are conflicting 
with or hostile to its activities. On the one hand, dislike of 
teacher, lack of interest in studies, impatience of routine, 
reaction from purely academic existence, discomfort from 
unhealthful or unnatural environment — ^hourly, daily, week 
after week, month after month, and year after year; on the 
other, love of play, the joy of motor activity, the social 
companionship of chums or the ''gang," the longing to 
make money, moving pictures, the theater, the lure of real 
life. 

Sometimes the solution seems easy when the introduction 
of some one of the many possible sources of interest into the 
school makes the school interesting. It is a temptation, for 
example, to look upon manual training as a panacea, and to 
depend upon it to hold the motor and construction-loving 
boy to his task. The sympathetic teacher, vocational 
motive, school city, each often serves to remove a hostile 
condition within the school and at the same time to check 
antagonistic forces without. Such solutions are but partial, 
and substitute favorable and even, in the case of particular 
individuals, necessary conditions to success for the elements 
essential to the useful development of all. Pupils may love 
their teacher, their school, and their work, and students their 
college without gaining the permanent impressions funda- 



CULTURE DISCIPLINE AND DEMOCRACY 39 

mental in the realization of the aim to which teacher, school, 
and work are but conditions and means. Desirable as inter- 
est in the whole school environment is, it is better 
that it should be lacking than that it should be must re- 
permitted to take the place of a constantly in- enforce the 
creasing attraction toward what is useful in life fj®^* useful 
and antagonism for what is evil. When the 
learner, day by day and year after year, is consciously accu- 
mulating the impressions which directly and certainly make 
for respect for law and the equal rights of others, a love of 
justice, truth and honesty, devotion to all necessary work, 
interest in the common good, the useful feelings which, if 
persistently enough and effectively enough sought, will in 
the end dominate life and character, he will in most cases 
come to love the environment with which such teachings are 
associated. None the less, as Compayre says of pupils in 
relation to school discipline, ^^ and Munsterberg of those to 
whom through heredity it is easiest to lead criminal lives,^^ 
every one of us has the right to the sum total of influences, 
conditions, and means, whether essential or non-essential, 
weak or potent, that tend toward the right. 

Of course, interest — the feeling of attraction or repulsion 
— ^is incidentally and variably associated with ideas and 
activities, through mere remembrance and ap- The efficacy 
perception, as it is definitely associated through of emotional 
specific and general disciplme. But mere re- 
membrance, with its incidental feeling, and apperception, 
with its changing interest in many relationships, cannot 
ensure the continual repetition of experiences certain to 
stimulate in ever-increasing degree a common feeling in a 
common idea or activity. Specific discipline must first, 
through certainly associating exceptionally impressive in- 
cidents or passages with the common centers, ensure for it 
a definite and permanent emotional nucieu, about which 
the mass of vague and forgotten impressions can multiply. 
Such an association transforms an idea into an ideal whose ap- 
plication becomes increasingly sure. And every application 



40 CULTURE DISCIPLINE AND DEMOCRACY 

of such an idea or activity through general discipline either 
adds to the fixed emotional nucleus or to the impressions 
for which it is the center. The fundamental ideals, points 
of view, and motives in life must not be left either to chance 
or to the certain recall of a few unemotional facts. It will 
take more than scientific temperance instruction to compel 
total abstinence, or than the principles of civil government 
to bring about good citizenship. But impression re-enforced 
by habit and habit by impression can come to have the force 
of instinct and heredity. 

6. Initial Remembrance, the Phase of Formal Self-activity 
Which Holds Ideas Until They Can Be Variably Ap- 
perceived and Specifically Memorized 

The second form of self -activity, from an educational 
rather than a philosophical or psychological viewpoint, is 

indirect recognition or initial remembrance, 
membnmce -^^^^ ^^ direct recognition lies the same mass of 
usually forgotten experiences which, concentrated in 

based on some particular direction, constitute impression 
cepts. ° ' in the sense in which we have just discussed it. 

It is in their physiological basis that Kiilpe finds 
a possible explanation for the immediate judgment of famil- 
iarity.^^ In contrast with this, back of indirect recognition or 
initial remembrance, lies some definitely recallable associa- 
tion. It does not at all matter what it is, but only that it is 
definite and readily comes to mind. Unless it has as its 
basis a single relationship, it involves but partial compre- 
hension and is dependent upon a partial concept. The two 
distinguishing characteristics of the partial concept are, 
first, the fact that it is partial, and, therefore, gives rise to the 
initial remembrance that may ultimately lead the way to an 
adequate concept and fuller comprehension; second, the 
fact that though definite, in so far as it is dependent on ordi- 
nary experience, it is accidental, and consists of relationships 
which vary with occasions and individuals. 



CULTURE DISCIPLINE AND DEMOCRACY 41 

This variability is equally true of the relationships 
upon which recollection depends — the chain of associa- 
tions that determine ordinary thought. Any one of the 
relationships ensuring remembrance may result in recall, 
and may, for the time being, constitute the remembrance 
itself. 

Investigations of Mr. Earl Barnes and others have shown 
that the minds of developing children are full of such partial 
concepts.-^ The monk is not the self-sacrificing member of 
a religious order, but the chipmunk or, better, the individual 
who sends out St. Bernard dogs to rescue children lost in the 
snow. The clock is something that ticks or tells the time. 
Sometimes, as in one instance in President Hall's well-known 
study, a concept is incorrect because it is partial. ^'^ The un- 
familiar cow was supposed to be no larger than the familiar 
mouse. Quite often the concept is both partial and incorrect, 
as when a high-school girl who had heard of pirates defined 
a pilot as a sea robber. Even here, as is usually the case, 
there is a partial truth in the absurd misconception. Both 
pilot and pirate are spelled with pi and t and have to do with 
the sea. 

The laugh that rises from such misapprehension is generally 
turned against the school. Its work is not being well done. 
Children are attempting studies which are too ... , j 
difl&cult, learning too fast, or, at any rate, being edge can- 
imperfectly taught. The usual effect of such in- ^ot be 
vestigations as that of Mr. Barnes has been agi- ^ equate, 
tation for more adequate knowledge. ''Let us see that chil- 
dren know thoroughly what they get, even if they get but 
little. Every word in the reading lesson must be spelled 
and defined. Pupils must be questioned into complete 
comprehension of all which they pretend to know at all." 
More than this, the scientist of a certain type steps in and 
insists upon exact knowledge. Physicians scoff at physi- 
ology primers because learners in pinafores speak of the 
heart as a pump. Physiographers despair because young- 
sters look upon volcanoes as mountains. 



42 CULTURE DISCIPLINE AND DEMOCRACY 

Nothing could be more fatal to self-activity in general 

than insistence upon completeness of comprehension. The 

^ . , number of ideas that can be remembered in all 

Partial con- . .^ , . , . -, r i 

cepts the the speciiic relationships necessary to define them 

very germs is relatively small. Most concepts of adults as 
° °^th* ^^^^ ^^ children are not only recognizable, but 
capable of recall only through some partial, non- 
essential, and, frequently enough, false or absurd relation- 
ship. It is the function of initial memorizing or mere remem- 
brance, based as it is upon any relationships at all, to hold 
an idea in mind and to make its recollection possible and 
definite. Such a simple relationship, however, constitutes 
the very germ of mental growth. Without it, fuller self- 
activity would be impossible. Partial concepts are points of 
attraction for all related ideas. They constitute association 
centers, apperceiving groups which reach out after new ex- 
perience. Facts, activities, impressions that would other- 
wise be forgotten, cluster about them. In a broad sense, 
education itself can be looked upon as the addition of one 
relationship after another to a partial concept until It is rela- 
tively complete. The greater the number of partial concepts, 
the greater the opportunity for development. The absence 
of a partial concept leaves many an experience without a 
means to the development of self-activity. One helps in 
retaining and developing the other. Without the interrela- 
tionships that come to exist between the many, the few are 
more likely to be forgotten. ''To him that hath shall be 
given, from him that hath not shall be taken away even that 
which he hath." Even in adult life, in the most complete 
and most useful forms of self-activity, the partial concept 
must be the point of departure. The flash of temporary in- 
sight, the perception of a new relationship, more readily 
forgotten because it is the product of accident or inspiration, 
may lead to the writing of a Thanatopsis, the invention of the 
telephone, or the building up of a hypothesis that explains 
the movements of the celestial spheres. No wonder that Dr. 
Holmes exclaims, "When found make a note of it." 



CULTURE DISCIPLINE AND DEMOCRACY 43 

The more stories that are told to children, the more they 
hear of intelligent conversation, the more they read or have 
read to them from miscellaneous books and periodicals, the 
more they travel, hear lectures, and see moving pictures; 
in short, the broader their environment and the more many- 
sided their experience, the greater the opportunity for partial 
concepts. The better the native retentiveness of the chil- 
dren, the more they can profit from the opportunity. It is 
an important function of the home, the press, the church, 
and public amusements to provide all children with this 
broad environment and many-sided experience. 

In the school, the resulting partial concepts and partial 
comprehension should not be scoffed at as incorrectness and 
foolishness, or mourned over as failure, but wel- 
comed as essential means to still further devel- ■^^ ^^ exact 
. r 1 1 ^^" partial 

opment. At every stage of advancement the concepts to 

learner should be tested for incidental information ^e taught 
as well as for adequate knowledge. He should ^^ *^^*^ 
be asked of each idea, not only — do you remember 
it in this specific relationship or group of relationships, but, 
in what relationships do you remember it? In college and 
university, as well as in elementary school, instructors should 
make sure that every individual is getting not only the few 
essential ideas in the specific relationships which make them 
useful, but that, in addition, he is getting in each branch he 
is studying as many ideas as possible, no matter what the 
relationships in which he holds them. There is the same 
distinction between a vacant mind and one filled with inci- 
dental and partial concepts as between a desert and a garden. 
This recognition of the partial and the variable may, at 
first thought, appear to encourage the carelessness in teaching 
to which the presence of partial concepts in children's minds 
has commonly been attributed. On the contrary, it will 
result in far more careful teaching. It is the recognition of 
the fact that a particular relationship or group of relation- 
ships, directly useful to the aim or to some branch of study, 
must be repeated with sufficient frequency to ensure the 



44 CULTURE DISCIPLINE AND DEMOCRACY 

specific discipline involved in their exact and ready recall by 
the whole mass of pupils taught in common. Otherwise, if 
remembered at all, they will not only be partial and include 
non-essential parts, but will vary with individuals, and fre- 
quently add to themselves or have substituted for them acci- 
dental or absurd relationships. Just what relationships 
should be readily and exactly recalled must eventually be 
determined through research into their relative usefulness; 
and just what number, through research into the amount of 
time that can be effectively spent each day in the memorizing 
of new material or the repetitions and reviews necessary to 
adequate retention. 

Haphazard partial concepts cannot be recognized except 
through contrast with partial relationships that are essential, 
and useful relationships not partial, the necessity for whose 
ready and exact recall through adequate repetition is thereby 
emphasized. 

If Mr. Bain is right in his assertion that memorizing is the 
most exhaustive phase of mental work,^^ ample time will be 
left for the development of impression and mere remembrance 
through the presentation of a multitude of facts and activities 
which cannot be certainly memorized in exact relationships. 
It is at this point that realization of the value of mere remem- 
brance most directly tends to more careful teaching. Re- 
membrance is most useful when the relationships to which it 
is due are true and essential relationships. Here the formal 
step in the recitation which the Herbartians have popularized 
as ''preparation" ensures carefulness. It is the calling to 
mind in the pupils of past experiences, which can be usefully 
related to what is to be taught. It seeks to detect the partial 
concepts which will be most useful, in case they exist, and, by 
stirring them into activity, not only tends to give the new 
experience a greater likelihood of remembrance, but to deter- 
mine the relationships in which it will be remembered. The 
partial concept, if it is a partial one, is made selective and 
more complex; the new one is remembered in useful re- 
lationships. 



CULTURE DISCIPLINE AND DEMOCRACY 45 

But, notwithstanding the carefulness which makes certain 
and definite by adequate repetition as many useful relation- 
ships as possible, and which through "prepara- 
tion" gives greater likelihood and usefulness to meinbrance 
remembrance, much that is taught will be re- useful, even 
membered, if remembered at all, through non- !^^®^ unde- 
essential, accidental, or absurd relationships wdth 
recollections which the teacher did not touch in spite of his 
skilful questioning, or which he incidentally revived with- 
out knowledge of their revival or their existence. After all, 
remembrance is useful as mere remembrance. The partial 
concept may become complete, the ridiculous relationship 
will be forgotten or remembered as an amusing blunder; but 
the indispensable condition to the future usefulness of an 
idea or activity is that somehow or other, in some way or 
other, it must be kept in mind long enough for it to be made 
fast by one incidental association after another. 

The teacher should never deliberately choose the non- 
essential or accidental relationships where a more useful one 
can be formed. But all children should be given in school 
the many-sided experience that more fortunate children 
get outside. Ultimately, all should get it by every possible 
instrumentality outside. 

It is not merely many-sided experience that is needed, but 
many-sided experience so directed and controlled that it is 
most likely to be useful. Travel, family trips, j^^^^ 
school excursions, collecting expeditions, visits for useful 
to museums and art galleries, stereographs, many-sided 
stereopticon views, realistic fiction, dramas, ^p®"® 
moving pictures that do not present what would be punished 
or suppressed in real life as immoral or illegal ; plenty of inter- 
esting periodicals and newspapers, with their good and evil; 
collections of all sorts of specimens, changing as children's 
interests change; all sorts of books which, not being juven- 
ilized, give partial concepts of useful v/holes; sermons and 
lectures not fully within the comprehension and interest of 
children but not too long; oratorios, musicals, luncheons, 



46 CULTURE DISCIPLINE AND DEMOCRACY 

parties and receptions; conversations, discussions, and oppor- 
tunities to listen to conversations and discussions not fully- 
understood; above all, patient and intelligent replies to child- 
ish questions; all these and other experiences should not only 
be brought about, if necessary, by or through the school to 
children, who without such intervention would lead abnormal 
"shut in," crippled, oriental lives, but should be consciously 
selected and directed with a view to possible relationships 
which may further the various details of the several phases 
of the aim. As partial concepts, the roots, the seeds, and the 
sucklings of self-activity are formed and held in children's 
minds by all sorts of inconceivable and kaleidoscopic catchalls 
and garden spots, it is easier to determine what is to be given 
the chance of taking root than what it is to be rooted to. 

Finally, it must not be forgotten that mere remembrance 
is in itself a pleasurable form of self-activity. It is as inter- 
esting to know in part as to fully know where one, 
sfcTedness ^^^ ^^^ ^^™^ being, takes the part for the whole. 
of experi- Especially with children, ready recognition of the 
ence essen- experience as it appears to them, ability to in 
college. some fashion or other answer the question who, 
what, when, or where, indeed, to answer any 
question at all, is part of the joy of living. This many-sided- 
ness is as necessary in higher education as in the training of 
the child. While the ''side shows" of the college course must 
not take the place of the "main tent," the main tent must not 
exclude the side shows. College life must be many-sided, 
not only for the sake of recreation, but as a means to the 
mere remembrance and varying apperception which must 
supplement specific discipline if education is to be complete. 
Enjoyment of music, art, and the drama — where possible, 
through membership in musical or dramatic club — reading 
along lines of individual interest, membership in literary 
societies, participation in political activities, leisure for ramble 
in country or woodland, above all, participation in social life, 
not merely in the democratic sense proposed by Dr. Wilson, 
but in that of a natural and congenial social group, far from 



CULTURE DISCIPLINE AND DEMOCRACY 47 

being tabooed as a menace to the real work of the college, 
should be required and compelled as an essential part of it. 
College life should only in part become a mechanical routine. 
The boyish prejudice against the "greasy grind," meritorious 
as his achievements may be, has again and again been justi- 
fied by the failure of valedictorian and salutatorian to carry 
over their efficiency from school to life. To many-sided 
application, many-sided knowledge and experience are as 
essential as routine. If modern education cannot include and 
dominate every phase of life, as Rabelais made it include, and 
dominate the daily experience of Pantagruel, it must at least 
see that due recognition is given to all that tends to develop 
the versatile and imaginative man of affairs. 

7. Varying Apperception, the Phase of Formal Self -activity 
which Ensures the Many-sidedness of an Idea and Its 
Interconnection with Others Not Permanently Related to It 

In its most general sense of many-sided relationship 
apperception is far more inclusive than in the sense to which 
I have applied the term varying apperception. General 
discipline may itself be regarded as a form of apperception 
— the "generalization" and "application" of the Herbartians. 
Specific discipline, as it is developed into complicated systems 
of thought in which groups of associations react as certainly 
as one, is apperception. But in the latter form apperception 
is unvarying, and in the former variable only in its operation. 
It is uncertain, but specific. 

Apperception itself may be specific in its presentation — 
and, so far as it is a means to instruction, should be, — but a 
group of relationships when once presented in some specific 
form will either give rise through unvarying repetition to 
specific discipline or, in its absence, become apperception 
that is varying. 

The partial concept, held in mind by mere remembrance, 
through lack of recall sinks to a mere impression which may 
or may not be useful. If sufficiently recalled to be perma- 
nently retained, it either tends, through unvaried repetition 



48 CULTURE DISCIPLINE AND DEMOCRACY 

in essential relationships that have been added to it, to become 
an adequate or at least a definite concept and a means to 
specific discipline, or, through repetition in varying relation- 
ships, to become a full concept, and hence a means to varying 
apperception, and, as will be demonstrated later, to general 
discipline itself. Effective education demands both unvaried 
and variable repetition, and each results from incidental ex- 
perience. 

The only educational value possessed by varying apper- 
ception, as distinct from discipline, lies in its variability, in 
. the fact that through it any idea in the human 

perception mind may be related to all others, and a specific 
the chief relationship find its accustomed stimulus in fields 
means to ^^ experiences remote from the one in which it is 
formed. It is the main correlating force in edu- 
cation, establishing a thousand and one different sorts of 
relationships for each idea figuring in individual experience. 
It is the fact that through it an idea may recall a multitude of 
other ideas, or be recalled by any one of them, that gives it 
its educational function. Its principle which, with all the 
exaggeration of recent fad and theory, is not yet sufficiently 
popular, is — repeat each useful idea in continually varying 
relationships. Some, differing in the case of every individual 
with individual experience, will through incidental repetition 
become permanent and result in specific discipline. The 
mass of them, for the time forgotten, constitute the potential 
energy of the individual mind, latent until some favorable 
condition causes the idea to recall them or them to recall it, 
to serve in turn either a specific or varying function. An 
apple drops from a tree, and in place of eat, wind, dodge, 
bruise, or any other association to which apperception has 
related the idea which is its symbol, Newton thinks of fall, 
of gravity, and then of other falling spheres and gravity. 
If hungry, he might have thought of eating it, if he had been 
hungry the day before — of colic. But, after all, it was by no 
mere chance that, in the absence of strong and immediate 
association pointing elsewhere, his thought turned to the 



CULTURE DISCIPLINE AND DEMOCRACY 49 

stars. The presence of various incidental and changing 
conditions psychologically determines the selection of the 
relationship which any fully apperceived idea will suggest. 
But back of this lies a more permanent condition which can 
be pedagogically controlled — the existence of groups of ideas, 
great apperceiving centers, variable in their relationships 
through their multiplicity, but dominant through the fact 
that they are continually called to mind. If a cook, a poet, 
or a huckster had been under Newton's tree, he also might 
have recalled food or colic, but, failing some immediate dis- 
traction, he would not have thought of gravitation. Just 
as Newton naturally pictured volumes, concentric spheres, or 
the greater velocity with which apples higher in the tree 
would hit the ground, the cook would have recalled apple- 
sauce, roast pig, or pie; the poet, the ''Planting of the Apple 
Tree," "The Last Leaf," or "The Apple of Discord," and the 
huckster, market price or bushel measure. 

The application is clear. No one relationship or fixed 
group of relationships can be made certain of recall by vary- 
ing apperception, but the recall of some one of the 
relationships belonging to the mass and through gj^J^ness 
it of others, and always, vaguely at least, the of relation- 
central idea with which all are associated, is ^^^p inakes 
made exceedingly probable through an ever in- dominant, 
creasing many-sidedness. The educational use 
of apperception lies first in mere many-sidedness, in making 
it possible for any two ideas to be re-associated. However 
incidental and unimpressive their association may be, the 
relationship has been formed, and in some flash of recollec- 
tion or of insight may serve as the connecting link between 
ideas, activities, and experiences otherwise remote. But 
second, it lies not merely in making a concept fuller, but on 
account of its frequent recurrence in varying relationship, in 
making increasingly probable the recall of any one relation- 
ship and in far higher degree the relationship which consti- 
tutes the concept itself. 

Just as through their continual and many-sided recurrence 
4 



50 CULTURE DISCIPLINE AND DEMOCRACY 

occupation, money getting, food and clothing are naturally 
made dominant in experience, so must instruction artificially 
ensure the continual many-sidedness necessary to the domi- 
nance of morality, health, efficient industry — as contrasted 
with mere occupations, — citizenship, social service, and right 
recreation. Multitudes of associations must be cumulatively 
formed about each specific phase of the educational aim — 
both for the sake of the many-sidedness which makes it pos- 
sible of association with every field of experience, and for the 
sake of the repetition which makes it dominant in recall. 

''Whatsoever things are true, whatsoever things are honest, 
Vv^hatsoever things are just, whatsoever things are pure, what- 
soever things are lovely, whatsoever things are of good re- 
port; if there be any virtue, if there be any praise, think on 
these things." 

This "concentration" of many-sidedness about funda- 
mentally useful relationships is essential to the realization 
**Concen- ^^ ^^^ educational aim, and is employed by 
tration" de- Herbart as an antidote for a purely incidental 
mandsuse- variation in recall. Without it many-sidedness 
ys em. ^^^ ^.^^ ^.^^ ^^ ^ ^^^^ ^^ ''Banderloggism" — 

the state of mental instability of which Kipling's jungle 
people accuse the monkey tribe. 

To such useful concentration, neither ''the five formal 
steps"^^ nor correlation constitute certain means. Through 
effective "preparation" and "presentation" new ideas may 
be associated in a many-sided way, and so further variation 
and reorganization of relationships. Even "generalization" 
and "application" may ensure merely a broader range for 
variation. Concentration is brought about only when 
generalization, made permanent in its general form, results in 
useful subordination or systematization; in the recognition of 
the idea as associated with the groups in which it will be 
specifically useful, and to whose specific usefulness it will add, 
or as specifically establishing a new relationship many-sided 
in a usefulness of its own. This is equally true of corre- 
lation. Indeed, assuming that it avoids the absurdities of 



CULTURE DISCIPLINE AND DEMOCRACY 51 

artificial apperception, the lamb-haunted school session made 
classical by Bardeen, or the "do-bird" and the '^re-bird," 
which Findlay found connecting music and nature,^'' its con- 
centration being that of branch with branch, tends to become 
academic, and so useful from the standpoint of specializa- 
tion rather than that of a general education. Whether in 
general or in specialized education, however, useful concen- 
tration — the cumulative usefulness of apperception as dis- 
tinct from its usefulness as a means to variation — is depend- 
ent upon the varying apperception of an idea made certain in 
some definite relationship or group of relationships. For 
example, the mere name Lincoln, and usually the fact that he 
was President during the Civil War, can be recalled by 
humorous anecdotes, assassination, school holidays, Gettys- 
burg, emancipation, or any other of the m^any- sided relation- 
ships in which Lincoln's Birthday celebrations have made it 
familiar. The more many-sided the association, the more 
frequently the name Lincoln is recalled, and the more fre- 
quently it is recalled, the more likely its recall or that of any 
one of the ideas to which it is related, as opposed to possible 
alternatives. But mere cumulativeness and frequency of 
recurrence does not ensure concentration, but rather the 
pathways through which useful relationships and groups of 
relationships can get into contact with other ideas and rela- 
tionships. A mere name can reorganize mental content, but 
it cannot dominate life and character. In place of a name, 
there must be definite and certain relationships — Lincoln's 
faith in divine Providence, his sympathy as illus- 
trated in the letter to the mother who had lost groupings 
her son, the democracy of his Gettysburg address essential to 
— or all others that relate the many-sidedness of ^km^^^ ^*" 
Lincoln to the essentials of religion, citizenship, 
or any other phase of the aim. These essential relationships 
must be recalled; the varying ones may be. The essential 
ones must be drilled upon until the name eventually suggests 
them, just as religion must eventually suggest faith and sym- 
pathy, and citizenship democracy. This done, the variation 



52 CULTURE DISCIPLINE AND DEMOCRACY 

and reorganization to which many-sidedness is the indispen- 
sable means will ensure useful concentration. The essential 
ideas that dominate life are not only made more certain of 
recall, but a means of contact has been forged for them, with 
a vast number of shifting and changing ideas. Specific disci- 
pline must supplement varying apperception if there is to be 
useful concentration, just as varying apperception must sup- 
plement specific discipline if there is to be general discipline. 
Mere remembrance and varying apperception incidentally 
provide the means by which the greatest possible number of 
ideas may recall each other. It is the function of specific 
discipline to see that the ideas most frequently recalled and 
recalling are recalled and recall in essentially useful relation- 
ships. 

Through varying apperception the essential relationships 
of life can be carried into any field of experience. Its varia- 
tion differs, however, from that of cumulative 
Varying ap- i^jipyession. There, varying incidents and ideas 

perception ^.. .,. -j-i 

may be resultmg m a common feelmg are associated with 

hostile to a common idea. The more they accumulate, 
impression. ^^^^ though forgotten, and the greater their 
variation, the stronger the feeling aroused by the 
common idea, especially if the form of each is adapted to the 
development of the feeling in high degree. 

With varying apperception each new association may result 
in a different impression, which may modify instead of inten- 
sifying the feeling that impression makes sure. 

To sum up the educational function of varying appercep- 
tion, on the side of knowledge it serves to develop full or at 
least broader concepts; to make ideas many-sided in their 
relationship. From the standpoint of self -activity this 
many-sidedness is useful in two ways. First, it associates an 
idea with as many other ideas as possible, and so, both through 
their possible recall and association through them with still 
other ideas, furnishes the means for carrying it into any field of 
experience. Second, it makes more probable the recall of the 
idea, in continually varying relationships — every successive re- 



CULTURE DISCIPLINE AND DEMOCRACY 53 

call making the recollection of the idea and of each of its rela- 
tionships more probable as compared with that of other pos- 
sible associations with which they must continually compete. 

From the standpoint of instruction the fields of experience 
opened to each idea through this first use of varying apper- 
ception must, so far as possible, include those in ^, 
which it is known to be most useful. A few useful 
relationships in which it will be highly useful — varying ap- 
especially if they are typical of distinct fields or ^^^^^^ ^°°- 
kinds of relationship — should be made certain through spe- 
cific discipline. So far as the time available permits, many 
more known to be useful should be associated even though 
they will be at once forgotten, or be variously held in mind 
through miscellaneous remembrance. Always possible of 
recall in the original relationship, useful concentration will 
make them increasingly likely of recall. In the case of indi- 
vidual learners a few relationships will continue to be recalled 
in their original form, and so will become specific even in 
the absence of specific discipline through instruction. 

But over and above the many-sided relationships in which 
the relatively most useful ideas are known to be useful, are an 
immeasurable number of relationships in which they may 
become useful. From this point of view, miscellaneous and 
varying many-sidedness, apperception merely for the sake 
of apperception, the accidental as well as the necessary rela- 
tionships of every-day experience, become educational. 
Relations may be added that are artificial, remote, or absurd. 
The naturally imaginative mind, probably based upon a 
brain in which associative fibers readily grow, will bridge over 
the gaps which instruction and experience leave behind. 
But both to the imaginative and to the unimaginative, made 
in part at least imaginative as children by fairy story, ro- 
mance, tales of invention, and books of travel and of golden 
deeds — constructive and imaginative experience 
and instruction must be given at every stage of Varying ap- 
educational development. They probably need fhrou^h^im- 
imaginative material more in the culture epochs agination. 



54 CULTURE DISCIPLINE AND DEMOCRACY 

of sense-perception and judgment than in that of imagination 
itself, which theoretically and perhaps biologically lies be- 
tween. They must form the special habit of synthesis, 
not only in so far as it involves the recombining of the 
material immediately presented to the mind through 
experience, but where it must leap over time or space, 
through incidental or even temporary relationships, to 
ideas until then unassociated. The "bromide," if truly 
educated, must become, in part at least, a "sulphite." 
The man in the orchard must have some of his ideas among 
the stars. 

Old Sir Thomas Browne's evils of the imagination^^ — the 
dangers rising from an unrestricted apperception which may 
put ideas into new relationships that are harmful, are, through 
this educational use of varying apperception, directed and 
regulated both negatively and positively. Negative pre- 
vention is practicable only through impression, in which some 
evil idea or idea group, certain to rise from experience, has 
associated with it a cumulative mass of material which will 
result in a growing feeling of repugnance or repulsion. To 
point out or to caution against associations that are merely 
possible in their evil has all the suggestive force of "Don't 
put the cat in the oven." Positive prevention results di- 
rectly from limiting the varying apperception of instruction 
to relationships known to be useful, and indirectly from the 
Froebelian dominance of counteracting groups of useful ideas 
which concentration continually makes stronger. When the 
seal is once broken, the genie of imagination does not have 
to be put back into the vase. 

Again, from the standpoint of instruction, the continually 
increasing frequency of recall, which constitutes the second 
Specific phase of varying apperception, must not tend 
discipline to bring to mind only a central association that 
useful ^ *° ^^ ^ mere abstraction, or one or more of the 
varying ap- ideas to which it has been related, but the 
perception, specific relationship or group of relationships in 
which the central association is most useful. That is, the 



CULTURE DISCIPLINE AND DEMOCRACY 55 

central idea itself must be the most useful relationship with 
which the useful many-sidedness can be associated, made 
definite and certain through specific discipline. For example, 
the notion of rights may be associated through incidental 
experience with woman's rights, punishment for misbehavior 
outside of the school grounds, self-defense, trespass, the 
carrying of canes by freshmen, the right to take a drink if one 
pleases, Jim Crow cars, a freedom from arrest when within 
the law, public school education, and a multitude of other 
things associated with what one has or has not the right to 
do. But certain specific relationships fundamentally useful 
should be so certainly associated with the notion of rights that 
they will be recalled when it is recalled. At least, considera- 
tion for the rights of others, the lack of moral necessity for 
and the unwisdom of always demanding one's own, the domi- 
nance of moral over legal right, and the fact that poHtical 
equality not only demands for one's self rights equal to those 
of all citizens, but for all other citizens rights equal to one's 
own — should be so repeatedly drilled upon in connection with 
the idea of rights in general that they will always be suggested 
by it and one will always suggest the others. Then, through 
instruction, there should be associated with the particular 
sort of right with which it belongs, inquiry as to whether rais- 
ing a car window will make a neighboring passenger uncom- 
fortable, prevention of noise that would be annoying to others, 
or of whispered conversation during a sermon or public lec- 
ture, the giving up of a seat in a street car, refusal to strike 
back at a petty or unworthy opponent, the forgiving of a 
debt to one who cannot afford to pay by one who does not 
need to take, the payment of a father's debts by a son on 
whom there is no legal claim, equal taxation, equal suffrage, 
and equal opportunity to prove innocence of crime. The 
number of primary relationships thus associated directly with 
the central idea itself, and of consequent relationships indi- 
rectly associated through each, is limited by the time avail- 
able for memorizing on the one hand and by their relative 
usefulness on the other. 



56 CULTURE DISCIPLINE AND DEMOCRACY 

As associations multiply, their recollection is made more 
probable and the dominance of the primary relationship 
_ greatly furthered, if the secondary associations 

iveness of represent not only useful relationships, but those 
typical re- that are sufficiently similar in form or kind with 
ationsmps. ^^^-j^y others to suggest an association otherwise 
not readily apparent. The firm association with the equal 
rights of citizenship of equal opportunity to prove innocence 
of crime makes it easier to associate with it, lynch law, habeas 
corpus, trial by jury, and the "unwritten law." Later the 
importance of such fixed typical relationships to general 
discipline will be fully demonstrated. Through them vary- 
ing apperception not only makes it possible for a habit or a 
definite relationship to be carried to any field of knowledge, 
but more probable that it will be carried to the field in which 
it can be usefully applied. Any association may become 
directly or indirectly useful, but those known to be useful, 
even though but once repeated in relationship to the central 
idea, may recall the primary relationships most fundamentally 
useful, and with each recollection make their dominance more 
certain. For example, woman suffrage, personal liberty, 
sumptuary laws, self-defense, the right of search, freedom of 
worship, eminent domain, prohibition, and federal election 
laws, associated but once with equal rights, are not only 
themselves given an increased likelihood of usefulness, but 
increase the probable usefulness of the ideal with which they 
have been once connected. 

The varying apperception of experience must be supple- 
mented by imaginative work and material in the school to 
ensure the maximum many-sidedness that is potentially 
useful. To make it most certainly useful through con- 
centration, its most useful varying relationships must be 
associated — and the most typical certainly associated with 
the specific relationships in which the central idea will be 
most useful. 



CULTURE DISCIPLINE x^ND DEMOCRACY 57 

8. Specific Discipline^ the One Certain Phase of Formal 
Self -activity, and Essential to the Usefulness of all the 
Others 

The one form of self-activity which can be certainly made 
to further the educational aim in all of its phases and details 
is specific discipline. By specific discipline I do ^ •« 
not mean merely the discipline peculiar to some discipline 
particular branch of study, but the self-activity includes 
which is based upon habit in the broad sense of f^^^l^d 
a fixed and specific stimulus invariably calling to systems of 
mind a particular fact or activity. It not only t^o^gj^* and 
involves the operation of isolated habits, but of 
fixed systems of thought and experience, in which habit has 
been associated with habit and general ideas with those sub- 
ordinate to them. It is the mechanical factor in education. 
In the case of miscellaneous apperception, an idea may sug- 
gest any one of a number of related facts or activities. In 
the case of specific discipline, whose distinguishing character- 
istics are definiteness of relationship and the certainty to 
which definiteness is a necessary condition, a particular fact 
or activity is sure to follow. 

In ordinary individual experience, or experience common to 
a particular environment or occupation, presentations tend to 
repeat themselves in definite relationships. These, re-en- 
forced by varying apperception which, however many-sided, 
brings continually to mind one's ordinary concept of the thing 
apperceived, are made even more certain than formal educa- 
tion can make them, through a persistent repetition that 
continues long after the period of formal education has ended. 
The relationships thus made certain are usually the narrow, 
the partial, and the commonplace. They may be highly 
useful, but their usefulness is limited to particular locations, 
occupations, or social groups. Education should seek to make 
still more certain of remembrance and recall relationships 
that are broadly and directly useful, and that have as their 
stimulus what will continue to recall them in many phases of 



$8 CULTURE DISCIPLINE AND DEMOCRACY 

every-day life after the repetition involved in formal education 
is no longer possible. Dr. Halleck, in illustrating the opera- 
tion of apperception, represents a man up a tree as judging the 
occupation of passers-by from what their comment or actions 
showed them to understand the tree to be.^'' It was good- 
morning, Mr. Tanner, to the man interested in the bark; Mr. 
Carpenter or Mr. Lumberman, to one who estimated its 
contents in board feet; Mr. Artist, to another who admired 
the form and color of its foliage, and so on, with poet, gunner, 
priest, or school boy. The only well-educated man, however, 
was the man up the tree. His concepts included that of all 
the others. Apperception in as broad a sense as the highest 
usefulness of each essential relationship demands, must be 
made specific and certain by education, as in a narrower way 
it is incidentally made specific and certain by experience. 
Specific discipline and varied apperception must supplement 
each other. 

Children can have but partial and individual concepts of the 
great mass of possibly useful things, but the partial concept 

of these things that are certainly most useful must 
At)Dcrc6i^ 
tion must be selected with a view to its possible useful rela- 

be specific tionships and be made fixed and certain through 

as well as formal instruction. Tree, throusrh education, 

varying. ' . ® . . ' 

eventually might suggest aesthetic and religious 

feeling, the usefulness of its different parts, drainage, and 
conservation. Through the incidental apperception that 
results from experience, it would sometimes be something to 
swing on, sometimes something to climb, and usually the 
thing that occupation or environment happens to make it. 
Left to ordinary apperception, sugar may suggest the maple 
tree, fudge, vacuum pan, sugar tongs, the tariff, sugar beet or 
Cuba, and, on reflection, a various mingling of such associa- 
tions. With apperception made specific and certain through 
instruction, it should when used as a general term suggest 
a great staple with its raw materials, the countries pro- 
ducing them, manner of production, trade, manufacture, 
and the uses to which the finished products are put, ex- 



CULTURE DISCIPLINE AND DEMOCRACY 59 

pecially in America. Even the partial concept of any highly 
useful thing should, so far as possible, begin Even partial 
with the specific memorizing of one or two of its concepts 
most useful relationships. Through a purely ^^^^^ ^.^j^ 
incidental experience, a church becomes a place essential re- 
where sermons are preached, where Sunday-school lationships. 
is held, where there are entertainments at Christmas. Edu- 
cation should make it certainly suggest the reverence becom- 
ing God's house, which in childhood begins, if not with 
Richter's mighty organ and the light of saint illumined 
windows, at least with the taking off of hats and subdued 
voices rather than blue tickets or chewing gum on the backs 
of pews. 

Usually the partial concept stops far short of specific apper- 
ception. Even the one or two associations upon which re- 
membrance is based are indefinite and uncertain. Witness 
the agitation of the public press when a year or so ago many 
of the winners of competitive examinations for appointment 
to West Point were not sure whether Alexandria was in Asia 
or Africa, or Saratoga in the Civil War or the Revolution. 
In fact, one of the most serious criticisms made of the new 
education is the lack of definiteness, which President Sharp- 
less recently illustrated by the Sunday-school boy who when 
asked, ''What was the first thing which St. Peter did after he 
denied his Lord?" replied with, "He went out in the garden 
and crowed three times." 

In place of the unvarying repetition of definitely associ- 
ated facts which characterized the old education, there has 
been too frequently substituted an individual specific 
apperception which, whether optional or acci- discipline 
dental, leaves the determination of what is to be J®^* *°° 
remembered and the relationships in which it is individual 
remembered, to the selective activity of each determina- 
individual's mental content. When the old *^°^* 
education stopped short of specific discipline it was because 
it sought to fix certainly all ideas in definite relationships and 
consequently give adequate repetition to but few relations or 



6o CULTURE DISCIPLINE AND DEMOCRACY 

to those that were non-essentiaL The new education stops 
short of it when it seeks to certainly fix indefinite relationships 
for too few ideas or none at all. Apperception is not disci- 
plinary where it merely develops temporary and many-sided 
self-activity based on varying relationships. Discipline 
involves habit, and depends for its persistence upon the ade- 
quate and unvarying repetitions of fact and activities in defi- 
nite relationships. 

Whatever the object of a particular sort of school work or 
branch of study, whether it is intended to further directly 
industrial efficiency, good citizenship, or some other phase 
of the aim, or to further indirectly all phases of useful activity 
through academic training and general discipline, specific 
discipline should result in two distinct ways and involve the 
development of quite distinct systems of ideas. 

First, the new ideas and relationships resulting from study 
will be apperceived differently by each individual according 
to his dominant mental content, his past experience, and the 
ideas that happen to be uppermost in his mind. Whether 
or not the habits and systems of the school carry over into 
life, the habitual attitudes of mind of individual life carry 
over into the school. Since the repetitions of thought and 
experience make life habits sure, those that are useful must 
be made to play their part in formal education, through 
teaching the material of varying apperception in relation to 
them. 

Second, both the new ideas and relationships and the 
old should be apperceived by all individuals through common 
habits and systems of thought which instruction has created 
and compelled. It is the function of specific discipline to 
make these habits and systems of thought acquired through 
formal instruction as certain as those acquired through every- 
day life. It must make them certain of operation in the 
academic field or they are not disciplinary at all. It may or 
may not meet the conditions necessary to their being carried 
over into other fields of knowledge and experience. Their 
dominance in any field, however, is primarily dependent upon 



CULTURE DISCIPLINE AND DEMOCRACY 6 1 

their system and their certainty. Habit must be systematic- 
ally added to habit until constellations of ideas swing in 
their orbits as unvaryingly as the planets rotate about the 
sun. 

In the case of the traditional ''disciplinary," "abstract," or 
''formal" branches, such as the languages and mathematics, 
system and certainty are not only essential to 
their mastery as wholes, but are favored by the Theabstract 
very sparseness of their subject matter, and the compels 

necessity for continually and unvaryingly repeat- temporary 
• c- 1 . • 1 • 1 rr>i habit and 

mg specinc relationships and sequences, ihey system. 

have been contrasted with "real" or concrete 
branches in whose many-sided content system is more 
variable and the repetition of particular relationships 
and sequences is not compelled by their unavoidable 
reiteration. 

It by no means follows that the study of the formal subject 
is necessary to discipline. Certainty and system are made 
mere probable because specific discipline is neces- p .. .. 
sary to the formal subject. Indeed, the present essential to 
demand by advocates of formal discipline for permanent 
concentration upon one or two formal subjects ^^"^ ^^^' 
for a term of years constitutes a confession that continuity 
in the use of subject matter is necessary to certainty of its 
relationships, even should its abstractness and system compel 
discipline so long as it is in use. A modified course of study 
may partially ensure this continuity wdthin the school. 
Outside of it, certainty of academic system is possible only 
through the continuity of specialization. Certainty of par- 
ticular habits may be ensured through the continuity result- 
ing from the many-sided relating of the subject matter of the 
school to e very-day experience. Without permanent certainty 
of relationship there is no permanent habit. Without per- 
manent habit there can be no lasting, formal, or general dis- 
discipline. The side-shows must not distract attention from 
the main tent. But nothing will be gained by substituting 
for the merry-go-round of the elective system the hobby- 



62 CULTURE DISCIPLINE AND DEMOCRACY 

horse of an academic specialization, which will be left behind 
in school. 

To demonstrate, however, that the system and many of 
the habits resulting from the study of formal subjects are 
not permanent and continuing for students who do not be- 
come specialists, does not deprive mathematics, or the lan- 
guages, of the aid to specific discipline given by the necessity 
of repeating its details in unvarying relationships. But the 
importance of w^hat is after all only a favorable condition 
can be easily exaggerated. Arithmetic, for example, is 
not commonly so taught in the schools as to rise to the 
dignity of mathematical system. The method peculiar 
to the formal subject compels a certain amount of disci- 
pline, but pedagogical method is necessary to ensure it in 
its fulness. 

Every step toward the development of effective pedagog- 
ical method in the teaching of the various branches in general 
is a step toward the equalization of conditions 
ical mefhod i^^^^^^^t in subject matter favorable or unfavor- 
can ensure able to specific discipline. The repetitions of 
system history are proverbial, but in it and other many- 

subject, sided branches, such use of specific relationships 
and conditions that continually recur, as to make 
pupils remember by them and think with them, is not com- 
pelled by a method pecuKar to the branch itself. It is de- 
pendent on a pedagogical method that the teacher too often 
has not mastered and for which he substitutes outlines, topics, 
and associations too numerous to be memorized with cer- 
tainty, which confuse the mind through their number and 
block the way to general discipline. In the present state of 
pedagogical training — not much different today in college 
and university than when President Butler voiced his dis- 
trust of the "experience that stands alone"^^ — from the 
standpoint of certainty as distinct from continuity and 
other conditions yet to be discussed, the advantage still 
lies, though quite unnecessarily, with the "formal dis- 
ciplines." 



CULTURE DISCIPLINE AND DEMOCRACY 63 

The unforgivable sin pedagogical is that on the strength 
of the minor and temporary aid to specific discipHne which 
the continual repetition of ideas in unvarying j^. 
relationships gives to the formal subjects, they preparation 
have become the required subjects of the school fo^ ^^e 
curriculum in place of the equally specific systems greater sys- 
of thought directly necessary to citizenship, right tem than the 
Hving, health, industrial efficiency, social service, "formal" 
and the proper enjoyment of leisure. There is 
not a phase of the educational aim which in addition to all 
that general discipline, information, and culture can contrib- 
ute does not require a more cumulative and complex system 
of specific relationships and fixed habits than mathematics or 
a language. The direct teaching of good health and good 
citizenship demands a more adequate specific discipline than 
the mastery of civics or physiology. The reason why history 
and civil government have been taught without making good 
citizens, and physiology without resulting in healthful men 
and women, is mainly because we have been teaching history, 
civil government, and physiology instead of good health and 
citizenship. They too are sciences. To impression and 
many-sidedness must be added the certain interrelation and 
subordination of group after group of ideas and activities. 
The duty of suffrage, for example, must be permanently 
associated with the noting of registration day and the dates of 
primaries and elections, the study of men and of issues, the 
habit of overcoming all obstacles that stand in the way of 
registration and of voting. It, in turn, with Australian ballot 
system, the inexorable punishment of frauds at the polls, 
the Fourteenth Amendment, naturalization, woman suffrage 
— each one of which like it, and many more has a mass of 
subordinate associations in its train — must be certainly re- 
lated to equal suffrage. Equal suffrage must call to mind 
equal taxation, equality before the law, equal responsibility 
for its enforcement, with their several series of subordinate 
groupings and subgroupings, and together with them and 
other ideas fundamental to democracy be classified as equal 



64 CULTURE DISCIPLINE AND DEMOCRACY 

rights. Through equal rights the whole complicated body 
of thoughts and activities of which ail these are but a part 
must be lirmly connected with the divisions and subdivisions 
similarly subordinate to the obedience to law, love of Hberty, 
patriotic self-sacrifice, loyalty to the union, and other funda- 
mental phases of true American citizenship. If the religion 
and morality, health, political and social service, industrial 
efficiency, and avocation developed through instruction are to 
cope with physical, social, industrial, and political evil made 
certain by experience and systematic through life itself, their 
specific disciphne must be more certain and systematic than 
that of the "formal . disciplines" themselves. 

Whatever the human will may be theologically and psycho- 
logically, educationally the first step in its development is the 
Confined building up of specific relationships. It is im- 
to special- pression with its specific centering of the feelings 
ization, spe- -j-j^g^^ constitutes conscience and "good will" so 

cin.c oisci" 

piine makes ^^^ 3.S they can be regarded as pedagogical crea- 
life too tions. It and the force of specific discipline, the 

one-sided, habitual range of ideas within individual systems 
of thought, form both the negative power of conscience or 
inhibition, and the positive incentives to routine existence, imi- 
tation, and general discipline. It is they that not only make 
the mathematician a mathematician, the soldier a soldier, and 
the good man a good m.an, but the "bromide" a "bromide," 
the poet a poet, and the inventor an inventor. The "bro- 
mide" or "philistine," satisfied Vv^ith his petty routine, seeing 
things as he has always seen them, doing what he has ever 
done, and saying what others have said, whether he is mathe- 
matician, soldier, good man, or all three, is one in whom ap- 
perception as a solely centripetal force has become certain and 
continuing. All conflicting associations, all relationships 
which lead away from the accustomed paths are inhibited by 
the fixed feelings or idea sequences that reign supreme. Once 
put the will to sleep or break down its inhibitory force, and the 
many-sidedness of relationship which has been centered upon 
fixed circles of thought becomes centrifugal in a reaction 



CULTURE DISCIPLINE AND DEMOCRACY 65 

which hurries the mind to associations that, whether useful, 
evil, fantastic, or absurd, have the one quality in common of 
being different from the old. One glass of champagne and 
the bashful or cautious man of few words may give a brilliant 
and witty after-dinner speech or become a loquacious fool. 
The bishop is quite Hkely to swear in the delirium of fever; 
the unimaginative man to dream of elephants that climb 
trees. Now the individual who has been so specifically 
disciplmed in some one field that its feelings and habits 
dominate all others, except when the will is temporarily 
conquered, is more of a monomaniac than if he had been 
obsessed by one idea. The monomaniac of one idea is only 
a monomaniac part of the time; the monomaniac who is 
dominated by a system of feelings and ideas is never likely 
to be sane at all. He may play a necessary part in civiliza- 
tion. He may be a mighty conqueror, the remorseless cap- 
tain of industry, or a glorious fanatic who blesses a people 
or destroys a creed. But such a monomaniac is the product 
of heredity and environment or the gift of God. Were it 
possible to produce him through education, we would not 
dare for fear that assuming the function of nature and of 
deity, we would create a Franlvcnstein. 

So far as instruction can supplement nature and experience 
by completing or correcting the systems which they so spe- 
cifically and certainly develop, it will be first by 
building up not one but all of the several great ordination of 
systems of specifically related feelings and all systems 
thoughts which correspond to the several phases *° direct 
of the educational ideal, including a subordinate essentfal.^^ 
academic specialization; and second, by ensuring 
for each a many-sidedness through apperception and general 
discipline, that is as essential to their highest usefulness as is 
specific discipline to the useful concentration of varying ap- 
perception. 

Specific discipline, through and for morality, religion, 
health, work, social service, citizenship, and avocation, is 
primary. It can be brought about only through continual 
5 



66 CULTURE DISCIPLINE AND DEMOCRACY 

repetition and reiteration year by year of ideas and activities 
definitely associated in the relationships which make them 
directly and certainly useful and in v/hich they will continue 
to be useful in every-day life, as well as in school. For this 
continuity is as essential as certainty. Not only must habits 
be continuing, but they must be continuing in the relation- 
ships which ensure their direct usefulness. 

Obviously, the direct and general usefulness of an academic 
subject or "formal discipline" is limited to its contribution 
Even as a ^^ various relationships, which will be reorganized 
specific dis- in specific association with some phase of the 
cipiine, the educational aim. Its mastery as a systematic 
subject is whole is only justifiable for all indi\dduals in 
on the common, if it thereby develops some relation- 

defensive, gj^-p Qj. ggj-jgg Qf activities, highly useful to all, that 
cannot be developed as thoroughly or at all by other subjects 
whose closer relationships to life make useful application 
either certain or more probable. That is, even from the 
standpoint of specific discipline, the highly organized subject 
matter of the formal subject, with its certainty of specific 
relationships and system, is a disadvantage rather than an 
advantage if its mastery as a whole is not directly useful. 
If mastery of the whole is unavoidable as a necessary condi- 
tion to that of some part which gives a relationship otherwise 
unattainable, or so much more thoroughly developed that the 
time spent in the mastery of the whole is justified, the more 
exact and thorough the branch as a whole, the greater the 
waste of time in its mastery. Hence, from the standpoint 
of a general education required of ail, as distinct from a 
specialization possible to each, every "formal" subject is on 
the defensive — first, to prove that the specific relationship it 
develops cannot be developed at all or as thoroughly by 
subject-matter organized for direct usefulness; and, second, 
to prove that to ensure such mastery or its directly useful 
relationships, it must be studied as a whole. 

From the standpoint of specialization, however, the master)/- 
of the branch as a whole may become necessary — not as a 



CULTURE DISCIPLINE AND DEMOCRACY 67 

required subject for all individuals in common, but in order 
that particular individuals may directly and specifically serve 
various phases of the aim in some way to which the branch as 
a whole is essential. All men to be healthy need not be math- 
ematicians and physiologists, but the physician must know 
his anatomy, and the specialist in advanced medical research 
his mathematics and electro-chemistry. Sharp discrimina- 
tion, then, must be made between the specific discipline which 
is specifically useful to all individuals, and that which is spe- 
cifically useful to the specialist. Science and civilization 
demand only of the few, the teachers and investigators, that, 
for the sake of knowledge alone, they shall devote their life- 
effort — their continual study to some particular branch of 
knowledge which to others may be avocation, industry, or 
citizenship, but to them means the advancement, the con- 
servation, and the transmission of learning. 

The specific discipline that directly and certainly makes for 
the various phases of the educational aim, must not only 
utilize and reorganize the system that may have r^^^ _ 
been in part academically acquired, but it must cific dis- 
utilize and reorganize the specific disciplines of ciplme of 
fife itself. Conspicuous among these is imitation aration 
— especially imitation of a personal example, must in- 

Ernest gained from the Great Stone Face a lesson *^^",?,® *^^* 

1.1 r 1 IT- rT^i of life itself, 

which no mere mass of rock could give, ine 

contemplation of Buddha, and "the putting on" of Christ 
as advocated by St. Paul and attempted by Thomas 
a Kempis, add through the presence of personality, the 
repetition of feeling and of action to that of idea, and so 
bring about interaction of habit and ideal. The imitation of 
ordinary life, however, needs direction through instruction, 
and the addition of other forms of specific discipline to ensure 
its usefulness. No human example is perfect, no divine ex- 
ample will remain unimpaired by the human imperfections 
which humanity has ever seen reflected in the divine. The 
personal example of a great teacher impresses itself upon the 
few; each of the Spheres of Helmholz responds to but a single 



68 CULTURE DISCIPLINE AND DEMOCRACY 

note. It is, after all, the sufficiently persistent pointing out of 
a great example by teachers who are not great that, added to 
all other forms of specific discipline, tends most strongly to 
ensure the ideals and the habits necessary to each phase of the 
educational aim. Example is better than precept, but it is 
still better when precept and fixed sequence of feelings and 
ideas are added to it. 

The specific discipline, then, of instruction directly prep- 
aratory to each phase of the aim, must be strong enough not 
only to continue in life, but to reorganize and 

Instruction dominate the specific disciplines of experience. 

to reorgan- . . ^ , , . . , , 

ize experi- To this contmuance and domination the closest 

ence must possible interconnection between the school and 
be related j rr • • j* t,i j'^- n^i. 

to life. every-day life is an indispensable condition. The 

specific discipline of the formal subjects most re- 
mote from life may be exceptionally certain on account of 
their remoteness. They are continuing and dominating, 
however, only for pedant or specialist; and then usually in 
the negative sense of inhibiting other relationships. Witness 
Fenimore Cooper's naturalist among the pioneers in *'The 
Prairie," or the professor of the modern newspaper cartoonist, 
provokingly untrustworthy in life's simplest experiences. 
Even systems of instruction not merely formal, but directly 
and specifically disciplinary in health or citizenship, always 
tend to be limited to the relationships in which their useful- 
ness has become habitual. Specific discipline is negative and 
inhibitory because it is specific. It tends to prevent wrong 
activity alternative to useful habits already formed, but not 
to carry useful habits over into new fields. The carrying 
over of academic systems as systems is reserved for the spe- 
cialist, except in so far as an academic system has in whole or 
in part been associated with the system specifically furthering 
some phase of the aim. If the habit of systematically noting 
details developed in chemistry, or a habit of analysis formed 
in grammar, is to be carried over into industry, it must be 
specifically associated with some definite phase of industry. 
The systems essential to morality, citizenship, and the 



CULTURE DISCIPLINE AND DEMOCRACY 69 

other specific disciplines directly necessary to complete 
living, must be carried over as wholes into every-day experi- 
ence not only to inhibit conflicting habits, but to reorganize 
and dominate every phase and episode of life in which they 
can be applied. The sole means to this end are varying 
apperception and general discipline. 

The varying apperception of each specifically useful 
group in all useful relationships that can be anticipated, is 
impossible through instruction. Still more out Domination 
of the question is the anticipatory association of possible only 
each in all useful relationships that are possible, through 
for few useful relationships are determinable in perception 
advance of the situation in which they are needed, and general 
At best, as has been said under varying apper- ^^"p^^®- 
ception, instruction must present as many specifically useful 
associations as time permits, and make certain the few that 
are most t3T)ical. Joseph Payne early pointed out the two 
fallacies of insisting that because there is so much to know 
in the world children should learn it all at school, and that 
because there is so much to be done in the world children 
should anticipate it all through instruction.^^ His solution 
was formal discipline; Herbart's was many-sidedness. 
Strange that we have been so long in perceiving that each 
solution is partial and inadequate without the other. Many- 
sidedness furnishes the system of transportation and inter- 
communication by which an idea or relationship can be 
associated with any other that is capable of recall. It makes 
equally possible the most desperate freaks of insanity and 
the noblest flights of imagination. Varying apperception of 
a useful relationship in manifold useful connections makes 
its usefulness more probable, both by multiplying the paths 
of certainly useful recall and by increasing the likelihood of 
recall. Its specific association in a few typically useful rela- 
tionships, gives it the only usefulness that is certain, and makes 
easier the task of general discipline. It remains for general 
discipline to give the highest probability of application to 
any useful sequence or habit, and consequently to the whole 



70 CULTURE DISCIPLINE AND DEMOCRACY 

system of ideas and activities of which it forms a part, in 
case that, through many-sidedness, its accustomed stimulus 
is associated with some unaccustomed field of experience. 

If specific discipline is to result in general discipline, if a 
habit or a sequence is to be carried over into some other 
General environment than that in which it is formed, it 
discipline must not only be certain and continuing, but its 
based on stimulus must be general enough to be found in 
as general the other environment. The fact that it is 
a stimulus found there does not, of course, make it useful 
as IS use u . ^j^gj-g^ j^qj. ^Qgg j^-g possible usefulness there ensure 
its recognition and the consequent and certain operation of 
the habit. The conditions necessary to its recognition will 
be discussed under general discipline. Meanwhile it is clear 
that specific discipline must meet the fundamental obstacles 
to the operation or the usefulness of general discipline — the 
association in the sequence or habit of a stimulus too par- 
ticular or too general to be useful. 

The too narrow stimulus is well illustrated by the mythical 
but classical case of the woman who having broken her right 
leg was sympathetic with all similarly afflicted, but wholly in- 
capable of sympathizing with anyone who had broken the left. 

A boy may learn to be certainly obedient to his father and 
not his mother, to a particular inflection or stress of voice, to 
a particular teacher, to any teacher on the second floor, or to 
no teacher off the school grounds. He is not as usefully 
disciplined as he should be until the stimulus to obedience 
is a command that does not violate conscience, given by any 
one who has the right to give it. On the other hand, the 
habitual stimulus to an idea or other activity should not be as 
general as possible, but only as general as may be useful. 
The whole German Empire laughed because a little town 
obeyed the absurd commands of an adventurer who assumed 
imperial authority with a cast-off uniform. Useful as the 
habit of observation is, its stimulus should not be any object 
which happens to fall within the range of the senses. The 
amiable lecturer before teachers' assemblies, who proves his 



CULTURE DISCIPLINE AND DEMOCRACY 71 

auditors poor observers by asking them the color of the neck- 
tie he wore the day before, the number of houses in the 
neighborhood which have front porches, or on which pair of 
legs a cow first rises from the ground would be a monomaniac 
more hopeless because scientific if he carried that sort of 
observation very far beyond the institute platform. Imagine 
him noticing the color of each auditor's eyes, the style and 
number of buttons within his range of vision and the details 
in the pictures, or other decorations on the wall. One of the 
most important problems connected with the development of 
self-activity is the determination of the extent to which it is 
useful for the stimulus to a useful habit to be general, if the 
habit is to be most useful. Generalization of the stimulus to 
a habit, thus limited, is the first necessary condition to general 
discipline or application, and will be more fully discussed in 
relation to it. It is the stimulus to the habit, not the habit, 
that is generalized. Habit is always specific. There is no 
such thing as a general habit, except as the term is loosely 
applied to a habit with a general stimulus. The important 
fact to note at this point is the necessity from the standpoint 
of education in contrast with incidental experi- Extent of 
ence, of limiting generalization, Herbartian or generaliza- 

otherwise, to the useful and to what furthers *^°" deter- 

1 <• 1 1 • 1 • X mined by 

some phase of the educational aim. Just as range of 

modern education has too often concerned itself useful 
with the development of mere many-sidedness, ^^^ ication. 
without regard to specifically useful apperception, it has 
insisted upon generalization without regard to the degree of 
generalization that is useful for the stimulus to a habit which 
may be either too narrowly or too generally applied. 

This is especially unfortunate at a time when Herbartian- 
ism, re-enforcing the movement toward many-sided knowledge 
as opposed to ''general discipline," is emphasizing the import- 
ance of the specific discipline peculiar to each branch of 
knowledge. If general discipline in the old sense is not to be 
depended upon, it is folly to substitute for it specific stimuli 
which may be too narrow or too general in their occurrence, 



72 CULTURE DISCIPLINE AND DEMOCRACY 

and, as regards the application of the consequent habit, to 
assume with Mr. Spencer the adequacy of incidental disci- 
pline not made certain and useful through method.^^ Payne's 
warning against the two fallacies, more or less popularized 
by the new education, is not untimely. 

The final factor that must be considered in connection with 
specific discipline as a condition to general discipline, as it 
^ ^. .^ has already been considered in connection with 

Continuity .^ ,. . ,. i . . .r • - ,.t i. 

as essential specific discipline as an end m itself, is its likeli- 

to general hood or certainty of persistence after the period 

as to specific ^f formal instruction has ended. While a habit 
oiscipline. 

once formed tends to persist, it will not continue 

to operate with certainty unless it continues to be called into 
operation. It is, therefore, not enough that effective instruc- 
tion should ensure the persistence of useful habits throughout 
the school course, but it becomes necessary either that the 
branch of knowledge responsible for the otherwise temporary 
discipline should continue to be studied or that the stimuli 
to the habits should continually recur in every-day life and be 
continually identified by the individual, who has been the 
subject of the discipline. In the case of a general stimulus 
this recurrence, carrying with it the possibility of the contin- 
ual operation of the habit, is more likely, though by no means 
certain. A stimulus may be generally useful without being 
frequently useful. 

The greatest certainty of frequency results from adequate 
regularity of recurrence. This is why the Church seeks to 
associate firmly acts of religious devotion with certain hours 
or events of the day. Once so associated, they are as certain 
to occur as the sun is to rise and set. 

It is remarkable that in a scientific age, with educational 
discussion so closely focused upon the question of disci- 
Continuitv P^i^^? the bearing of the persistency or non-per- 
lacking in sisteiicy of habit upon the ultimate disciplinary 
the "form- value of the so-called disciplinary branches has 
jec . ^^^ been taken into account. From the stand- 
point of immediate and temporary specific discipline, the dis- 



CULTURE DISCIPLINE AND DEMOCRACY 73 

ciplinary possibilities of the abstract subject are strong, both 
from the general form of its stimuli and the continual recur- 
rence resulting from their general form and relative fewness. 
Its discipline, however, is likely to be only immediate and 
temporary except in the case of the specialist. Tothe general 
student, for example, the value of mathematical discipline 
declines as soon as he ceases to come into occasional and fairly 
frequent contact with the combinations of symbols or lines 
and angles w^hich constitute the stimuli to the great mass of 
mathematical judgments. Occasional and accidental con- 
tact with their stimuli may serve to revive habits, but cer- 
tain contact with a frequency whose exact determination is 
an important problem of educational method, is necessary to 
their persistence and automatic operation. Even the few 
moral or intellectual habits made temporarily certain by 
mathematics within the mathematical field, either may fail 
through inadequate method to have a general stimulus and 
other conditions soon to be discussed as necessary to general 
application, or may be formed far more economically than 
in connection with a multitude of purely mathematical habits 
requiring in the aggregate an immense amount of time for 
their development and temporary retention. 

To sum up — specific discipline as involving the develop- 
ment of complex systems of habit is primarily essential to the 
direct furtherance of each phase of the educational aim, in- 
cluding properly subordinated and specifically related aca- 
demic systems in parts or as wholes, such as civil government 
as relatal to citizenship and various operations of arithmetic 
as related to business practice. Of these directly useful sys- 
tems, every generally useful moral or intellectual habit 
should ultimately form a dominant part. It may be first 
developed in the home or in the school, through conduct or 
through academic study, but it is capable of being developed 
through direct preparation alone. Each academic subject 
essential to direct preparation or to specialization, should 
make every generally useful habit sure, but it is not always 
practicable in the academic field to give a generally useful 



74 CULTURE DISCIPLINE AND DEMOCRACY 

habit, the general stimulus necessary to general discipline. 
System as a whole does not carry over beyond the special 
field. Hence, the more difficult the system is to master and 
the more adequate its specific discipline, the less likely is its 
mastery to be essential on the ground of general discipline 
alone. Any habit that is useful in various fields of experience 
is capable of being effectively developed in various fields of 
experience. 

From this point of view, a particular branch of mathe- 
matics or a particular language or natural science, cannot be 
justifiably required of all. As a whole, through 

^° T^^]^^^,® certain of its constituent habits, it may furnish 

subjects for ,,..,. . ,. "Vt,, 

the sake general disciplme to the specialist. Through 

of general some of its directly useful parts it may become 
alone/^^ a general discipline to all. But no one should 
be required to master it as a whole or in part only 
for the sake of some generally useful habits which it certainly 
develops. Even though regardless of pedagogic method it 
develops them more certainly than any other branch of study, 
they can be as certainly formed with the aid of effective 
pedagogical method through direct preparation for life. More 
than this, if academic organization were necessary to the 
development of generally useful habits, direct preparation in- 
cludes enough academic subjects as wholes or in parts to en- 
sure it. 

As involving the development of single habits or groups 
of habits, specific discipline is essential to the certain 
usefulness and increases the probability of the indirect 
and general usefulness of each other fundamental form 
of educational self-activity. 

Impression is certainly useful only when its 
Specific feelings are specifically centered upon a common 

discipline [^^^^ qj. prroup of ideas, and more likely to be in- 
essential to <~j l ^ j 

the useful- cidentally developed when instruction has cer- 

ness of tainly associated with the common center a few 

all other incidents which will make it emotional. Mere 
formal self- r i •<• 

activity. remembrance is most likely to be useful if the 



CULTURE DISCIPLINE AND DEMOCRACY 75 

partial concept which holds the thought in mind is one 
determined by instruction and specifically related to some 
phase of the educational aim. 

Apperception is certainly useful within a limited sphere 
and more likely to be useful in all of its many-sidedness, if 
the few relationships in which a highly useful idea is most 
useful are specifically associated with it. And the operation 
and the usefulness of even general discipline itself will be 
found on analysis to depend not only upon the certainty and 
the continuity of the specific relationship which is to be 
generally applied, but upon other fixed relationships, in the 
absence of which the habit most many-sided in its potential 
usefulness has little likelihood of being carried over. 

A realization of the fundamental necessity of specific dis- 
cipline carries with it renewed appreciation of the fundamental 
necessity of mechanical memorizing. It does not „ 

,'r ^ • ^ •• 1 1 Specific 

justify mechanical memorizing per se, but the discipline 

mechanical memorizing of essential relationships, involves 

It does not involve reaction into the age of ^^echamcal 

® memorizing. 

Squeers and Gadgrind, with its verbatim mastery 

of text-books, rules, and definitions including a mass of 
details incapable of aiding memory or compelling thought. 
It does not involve even a partial revival of the Procrustean 
curriculum in which individualism was crushed by the re- 
morseless force of formal discipline. But it does make neces- 
sary as economical a use as possible of such portion of each 
school day as can be effectively spent in the mechanical mem- 
orizing and recall of the specific relationships which not only 
in complex systems of thought and other activity directly 
prepare for useful living, but which give the highest probability 
of usefulness to the impression, mere remembrance, varying 
apperception, and general discipline which indirectly further 
the same end. The determination of the relationships thus 
essential is one of the most important functions of the science 
of education, and is tentatively discussed in the following 
chapter. When physiological and psychological conditions 
so seriously limit the time that can be effectively spent in 



76 CULTURE DISCIPLINE AND DEMOCRACY 

memorizing, when individuals vary so greatly in their native 
retentiveness, the mastery of non-essential details or of merely 
formal disciplines is a crime against both the development 
of individuality and social progress. It is with scientific 
appreciation of the pedagogical value of the little time avail- 
able for memorizing and specific discipline that Alexander 
Bain asserted that the study of the classics in place of train- 
ing the memory expends it.^^ 

9. General Discipline, the Phase of Formal Self -activity which 
Ensures the Widest Useful Application for Useful Rela- 
tionships 

If there were no limit to the anticipation of useful relation- 
ships and no limit in time or in physiological conditions to the 
number of relationships that could be made certain by spe- 
cific discipline, instruction could, theoretically at least, pre- 
pare for every emergency in life without the mediation of 
general discipline. The teacher would become a prophet; 
man, an automaton. It is the necessity for the mediation of 
general discipline and the uncertainty of its useful operation 
that makes man both a responsible being and a creature of 
circumstance. On the one hand, its limit lies in varying ap- 
perception — the extent of whose many-sidedness of possible 
relationships narrows or broadens the field in which habits 
can operate; on the other, in specific discipline — the cer- 
tainty of whose persistence and the relative abstractness of 
whose general stimulus lessen or increase the number of 
habits which can be carried over. 

Joseph Payne and Herbart were equally conscious of the 
inadequacy of specific disciphne. But Joseph Payne sought 
to supplement it by formal discipline which, emphasizing the 
specific discipline of an academic subject and ignoring many- 
sidedness, except in so far as the Latin language ensured it, 
took universal application for granted. While Herbart 
sought to supplement it through many-sidedness and in his 
five formal steps to ensure general application not only 
without the specific discipline of an academic subject, but 



CULTURE DISCIPLINE AND DEMOCRACY 77 

without making clear or perhaps clearly perceiving that his 
circles of thought must in themselves become specific disci- 
plines or center about them. Certain of his followers have 
come to emphasize the importance of the specific discipline 
peculiar to any branch of knowledge and, consequently, spe- 
cialization. They have as yet failed at two points. First, in 
failing to perceive the fundamental necessity of specific disci- 
pline through direct preparation for life, that is, of specific 
discipline based on cumulative organization and systematiza- 
tion of material in relationships which directly further each 
general phase of the educational aim. Second, in failing 
to realize the fact that the general discipline ^j^ << 
whose importance they minimize is involved in cific disci- 
the general application of specific habits even piine" of a 
within the field of the academic specialty which branch 
develops it. That is, "specific discipline," in involves 
the sense in which Professor De Garmo uses the ^?"®^f? 
term/^ is impossible without general discipline 
of precisely the same sort that is necessary to carry over a 
habit into some field into which the whole system of which 
it is a part cannot be carried. It is little less difficult, for 
example, after a mathematical proposition has been demon- 
strated and its premises and conclusions habitually associated 
with each other, to apply it within the mathematical field itself 
— say to originals in geometry — than to apply other habits 
quite outside of the field of knowledge in which they are 
formed. This means that the scope of general discipline is 
broad enough to include specific discipline in any other sense 
than the formation of a particular habit. Greater dissimi- 
larities and complexities may stand in the way of the applica- 
tion of a particular habit within a branch than of the outside 
application of another formed in the same field. The true 
general discipline is the carrying over of a habit to any en- 
vironment in which it is more difficult to recognize its stimulus 
than that in which it was formed. 

It is the habit that is specific and its application that is 
general. The Herbartians come nearer to the true problem 



78 CULTURE DISCIPLINE AND DEMOCRACY 

when they investigate specific and useful apperception, which 
culminates through generalization in application. If they 
had been as persistent in investigating ' 'application" as 
* 'presentation" and "preparation," the problem might have 
already been solved. 

There is little choice between an academic cocksureness, 
which assumes general discipline as a matter of course, and 
a pedagogical skepticism, which has been trying to ignore it 
altogether. In either case it continues to operate incidentally 
without the assistance of a scientific method which will 
ensure for it the broadest operation that is useful. 

No experimentation is necessary to demonstrate that it 
does operate incidentally. What experimentation has 
demonstrated is that it does not operate as a 
£^foT°^^^' ^^tt^^ ^^ course. Even its incidental exercise, 
proves aside from the effects of variations in experience 

general ^nd instruction, varies greatly with individuals 

uncertSn. ^^ proportion to their native retentiveness, their 
physiological capability of readily multiplying 
associations, their sense of discrimination and ability to 
identify. But that it is exercised every individual can dis- 
cover for himself, either through noting his every-day experi- 
ence or from a glance at the history of human thought. 
Investigators, having formed the habits of thought peculiar 
to physics, carried them over into psychology and psycho- 
physics, a new science, was born. Every great invention, 
almost every apperception of a new idea, and many an appli- 
cation of ideas that are old involve the carrying over of 
some fixed relationship into a new environment. In many of 
us general discipline operates within restricted and familiar 
fields, in the most of us it operates far too little. 



CHAPTER III 

A DISCUSSION OF THE CONDITIONS FAVORABLE TO 
GENERAL DISCIPLINE 

Granted a habit or sequence of ideas certainly formed and 
persistently recalled, with a stimulus as general as is useful — 
and the fundamental problem of general disci- r^^ietunda.- 
pline is (i) To what extent can it be carried over mental 
into other fields of knowledge and experience? (2) problem 
To what extent will it be useful to carry it over? discfplTne! 
and (3) what are the conditions which must be 
present to make its useful application as probable as pos- 
sible?42 

I. Extent of General Discipline Dependent Upon Recurrence of 
the General Stimulus 

Obviously, the extent to which a fixed relationship can 
carry over into other fields of knowledge and experience than 
the one in which it is developed, is dependent . ^ 
upon whether or not the usual stimulus is to be systems 
found there, and whether or not the usual conse- cannot 
quence or a modified consequence can follow. In as^wholes^ 
the first place, no system of thought as a whole 
can carry over, though component habits or groups of 
habits can. The various systems of habits on which the 
specific discipline of mathematics is based can apply 
only in the mathematical field. They can become general 
within that field and apply to physics, chemistry, or engi- 
neering, but their application is always mathematical. This 
is equally true of every other complex system of ideas and 
activities. Systems are specific — not general — in their useful- 
ness. Mathematics cannot take the place of geography; or 
geography, of citizenship or industrial efficiency. One system 

79 



8o CULTURE DISCIPLINE AND DEMOCRACY 

may include another or require another to supplement it. 
One or more mathematical systems are required by each of the 
sciences and by many branches of industry. Industry in 
most of its forms requires sciences as wholes or in parts, as 
well as a system of ideas and activities directly preparatory 
to all forms of industry. But the systems do not carry over 
to other systems because they are specific in their organi- 
zation. 

On the other hand, their component habits and groups of 
habits may or may not be capable of carrying over. The 
habitual mathematical judgments suggested by combina- 
tions of lines or symbols cannot, because in such connection 
they are found only in the mathematical field. Often they 
cannot carry over even from one branch of mathematics to 
another. The habits of algebra operate but Httle in geometry, 
or those of geometry, in trigonometry. In the case of the 
languages, however, certain relationships very commonly 
find their stimulus in all languages, depending in each upon 
the extent to which the forms of language have been devel- 
oped. But they cannot operate in fields other than the 
languages because their stimulus or consequence does not 
occur. The relationship is not there. 

Even habits which have a sufficiently general stimulus to 
be carried over are not necessarily connected with that general 
stimulus in the mind of the mass of learners. Observation, 
analysis, synthesis — immediate or progressive — discrimina- 
tion, identification, industry, and persistency can have as 
their stimulus any group of things, but since such a stimulus 
would be too general, are actually stimulated by particular 
kinds of things. It follows that the very "thoroughness" of 
a formal discipline tends toward the specific rather than the 
general. It makes a specific system sure, but system cannot 
be carried over. It makes symbols, lines, and grammatical 
ideas highly certain stimuli, but the more certain it makes 
them the more surely the resulting habits are combined in 
the system, the more difficult it may be to associate resulting 
activities with some other specific stimulus. 



CULTURE DISCIPLINE AND DEMOCRACY 8l 

When the useful general stimulus is not so general in its 
form as to prevent its being actually substituted for the 
specific one which is being made certain, some of the virtue 
of "thoroughness" may be handed over. The boy who is 
habitually obedient to a particular individual, or the soldier 
to a military superior, can be drilled into associating with 
specific or soldierly obedience, obedience to any one having 
the right to command, rather than with a particular tone of 
voice or a uniform. Even here, unless the stimulus is to be 
a mere command, typical stimuli such as parent, teacher, 
policeman, ship officer, etc., must be in turn associated with 
the general stimulus, not to make it more general, but to 
make it general in a particular field where its exercise is 
useful. Even obedience to God's law must be associated 
with ''children obey your parents," "servants, your masters," 
and the idea of obedience to law. 

But where, as in the case of formal discipline or, indeed, 
of that of a natural science, the only general stimulus alterna- 
tive to the specific one is too general to be useful 
or profitable, carrying over is impossible except discipline 
through the association of other specific and, where sometimes 
possible, typical stimuli with the original one Possible 
itself, combined with sufficient practice in carry- through 
ing over to prevent the negative effect of not multiplying 
obeying the stimulus. One cannot observe every- ^^^ ^ 
thing, synthesize all details, or be industrious 
in every field of experience. More than this, where a par- 
ticular field of knowledge is so general in its extent in time or 
space, as to be continually presenting its details, its specific 
stimuli may be so all-pervasive as to shut out or at least tend 
to prevent observation, synthesis, or industry in any other 
field. The thorough botanist is less likely to observe rocks 
and birds on account of his habit of observing flowers. Sir 
Isaac Newton boiled his egg-shaped watch while holding an 
egg in his hand, took ofT his hat to a cow, and fell into a ditch, 
not because he was a poor observer, but because he was an 
observer of the stars. At times, when the habit, through the 
6 



82 CULTURE DISCIPLINE AND DEMOCRACY 

thoroughness of its exercise in one field of experience, is not 
of necessity excluded in all others, it can be carried over into 
other fields specifically and continually associated with the 
general stimulus. A thorough observer in chemistry can be 
readily led to observe in physics or in the affairs connected 
with some ordinary business if, as he observes in his chemistry 
the idea of observing in the other field is made habitual, un- 
less, notwithstanding his thought of observing, continually 
confronted with the other field, he habitually fails to observe. 
That is, while he need not be drilled on observation in the 
newer fields until they themselves become specific disci- 
plines, he must be drilled in carrying the thorough habit over. 
It clearly follows, first, that, altogether aside from the 
argument, based upon the necessity for continuity of the 
g^^i^g habit, which is to be carried over, the field of 

should be Study in which a particular habit, general in its 
formed in usefulness, should be formed and consequently 
where they made certain, is the one in which it will continue 
are most to be most useful; and second, that its general 
useful. stimulus should be continually associated with 

other, and, so far as can be, typical fields in which it ought 
to operate most frequently. This means that except in the 
case of specialization, habits generally useful should be formed 
through direct preparation for some phase of life. No sub- 
ject should be required of all students on account of its dis- 
ciplinary value alone, no matter how certain the specific 
discipline that it compels or how numerous its generally 
useful habits that can be carried over into other fields of 
experience. 

2. Necessity for Determining the Extent to Which It Is Useful 
to Carry a Habit Over 
The importance of determining the extent to which it is 
useful to carry a habit over has been abundantly demons- 
trated in the preceding discussion. Not all general discipline 
is useful. The habit with a general stimulus may be inci- 
dentally carried over, when the individual forming the habit 



CULTURE DISCIPLINE AND DEMOCRACY S^ 

is not conscious that it is generaL If the trained observer, 
for example, becomes interested in some new field, we may, 
so far as is permitted by conditions yet to be discussed, apply 
the habit of observation, already formed, usefully or harm- 
fully, as may happen to be the case. It is the province of 
instruction to see that as the habit is formed its stimulus is 
made as general as may be useful. This, as has just been 
indicated, can be done in two ways: First, in cases where 
there is no alternative except between the stimulus specific 
in the field in which the habit is formed and one so general 
that it can carry over into fields where it will not be useful, it 
must be continually associated in actual practice with other 
fields in which it ought to operate. It may carry too far. 
It may scarcely carry at all. But it will be most Hkely to 
carry to the fields to which it has more or less frequently 
been applied. Of course, if it is applied often enough in any 
one of them to actually become habitual, a new specific dis- 
cipline will have resulted. 

Second, in cases where it can be put in the relatively more 
general form in which it is most useful, the specific discipline 
itself should constitute a continual application of the more 
general stimulus, which thereby becomes potentially and use- 
fully specific in a far wider field. If, for example, obedience, 
like observation, could be made generally useful only by asso- 
ciating it with obedience in school, obedience to parents, 
obedience to law, and so on, it would be less likely to carry over 
usefully than when the more general stimulus of any com- 
mand from one who has the right to exact obedience is con- 
tinually associated with each habitual stimulus. The first 
sort of limitation merely multiplies specific fields of useful- 
ness; the second ensures a field of application far wider than 
the specific fields can collectively be. 

3. Continuity the First Condition to General Discipline 
Certain of the conditions essential to general discipline 
have already been discussed: First, continuity of specific dis- 
cipline. Since the system peculiar to a particular branch as a 



84 CULTURE DISCIPLINE AND DEMOCRACY 

whole does not carry over, it is apparent that unless it is in 
itself directly useful it is not essential that it should continue 
as a whole. It is essential only that any constituent habits 
or groups of habits that are generally useful should continue 
and carry over. If they are generally useful, it follows as a 
matter of course that they can be developed outside of a 
special branch, and hence in case the general branch is not 
directly useful that they should be developed outside of it. 
The reasons for this are clear. It is wasteful to study the 
special branch if its only use is the mastery of specific rela- 
tionships which can be developed elsewhere — the more 
thorough and certain the specific discipline as a whole, the 
greater the waste, both in point of time necessary for the 
thoroughness and in the tendency for the useful specific rela- 
tionships to suggest the useless system in place of systems 
in which they are themselves directly useful. Since the 
special branch that is not directly useful even as avocation or 
through specialization is likely to lose its continuity, its useful 
relationships must be made habitual in some other field of 
knowledge or experience before they are forgotten with the 
rest of the branch as a whole. It is easier to develop them 
in the first place as part of a system in which they can con- 
tinue, and easier to continue them in the system in which they 

^ ^. .^ are first developed. More than this, in the case 
Continuity ,,» ,, i. iiii- 

more prob- of the formal or abstract subject, the only habits 

able for that can carry over are those, such as observation, 

fo^rmed analysis, synthesis, perseverance, and industry, 

through which, owing to the fact that their most general 

direct prep- stimuli — the only alternatives to the specific 

stimuli peculiar to the abstract branch — cannot 

be usefully substituted for them, must after all be developed 

by persistent exercise in each field in which they are useful 

to the individual. They will be more readily developed in any 

field because they have already been developed in some one, 

but why not in one in which they will continue to be useful, or 

at least in one which is directly useful while it lasts? A boy 

coming into the city from the country to go into business 



CULTURE DISCIPLINE AND DEMOCRACY 85 

would be better equipped for his work if he had been trained 
to remorseless industry and routine in it, rather than in the 
work of the farm. He might have been as adequately drilled to 
work and to persevere through the study of the higher mathe- 
matics or Sanskrit, imdertaken on account of their remote- 
ness from his life, but while he has been at work on the farm 
he has been of use in the world and has added to his habits 
of labor a consciousness of the necessity of work, as immedi- 
ately useful in itself, under conditions more nearly identical 
with work in general, than are those involved in abstract study. 

The multitude of fixed relationships involved in abstract 
study die with it because they are incapable of being related 
to life. In any specific discipline, whether of life or of study, 
the only chance for continuity on the part of habits with 
stimuli which, like those to industry and analysis, have no 
other alternatives than being variously specific or becoming 
too general, lies in their fullest useful relationship to other 
fields of knowledge and experience which are to continue as 
a part of every-day life. 

The foregoing arguments are in themselves overwhelmingly 
conclusive against the required study of subjects useful for 
their general disciplinary value alone, but others will be added 
which are in themselves strong enough to be convincing. 

4. The Second Condition to General Discipline, Habitual 
Consciousness of as General a Stimulus as Is Useful 

The second condition to general discipline is as general a 
stimulus as is useful, of whose general meaning the individual 
forming the habit is made habitually conscious by effective 
pedagogic method. The specific discipline may provide a 
sufiiciently general stimulus, but only effective pedagogical 
method will make the learner conscious of it. For example, 
the fundamental principles of percentage are so general in 
their form as to be universal in their application. Anything 
can be conceived of in terms of hundreds. To the ordinary 
pupil, however, "base" is as concrete and narrow a term as 
"cost" or "par value," The term base must be so consciously 



S6 CULTURE DISCIPLINE AND DEMOCRACY 

and persistently associated with the idea of hundreds on which 
a certain number of hundredths are to be taken that it is 
associated not merely as a name, but in its general meaning 
with per cent., just as percentage, in turn, must come to sug- 
gest the number of hundredths taken and the resulting 
hundredths on all the hundreds. Otherwise, the general 
principles are not general — even within the arithmetical field. 

_ In the case of other mathematical subjects, such 

grTmmat-^^ as geometry and algebra, from the standpoint of 
ical nomen- mechanical operation, the stimulus is general, 
clature a both in form and meaning. If their relationships 
application. ^^^ mastered at all, they usually are mastered 
with both the general form and the general mean- 
ing that will make them useful. In the case of the languages, 
and more especially the grammar of the English language, the 
general terminology is at many points so hopelessly conflicting 
that the general meaning of a stimulus has to be associated 
with as many as six or seven different general terms denoting 
it. Mr. W. G. McMullin, for example, has shown that in 
the elementary grammar and language works used in the 
city of Philadelphia alone, it is possible, though, of course, not 
probable, for a pupil to have to learn thirty-one names for 
but seven different constructions.^^ 

Here the final remedy is selection of some one general term 
for each general relationship by a national committee suffi- 
ciently representative to compel universal acceptance. 
Largely through the efforts of Professor C. R. Rounds, of the 
State Normal School at Whitewater, Wisconsin, and of 
Professor Hale, of the University of Chicago, the National 
Education Association, in 191 1, actually appointed such a 
committee to confer with similar committees from the 
American Philological Association and the Modern Lan- 
guages Association of America, which had made abortive 
effort in the same direction in 1906.^ The immediate remedy 
is the requirement that every teacher of grammar shall be 
familiar with a sufficient number of the terms in use to pre- 
vent her from calling a pupil wrong who makes correct use of 



CULTURE DISCIPLINE AND DEMOCRACY 87 

some one of them not included in a particular text. To 
require itinerant pupils to master successively three or four 
different terms for the same general relationship is confusing 
in a high degree, and an obstacle even to specific discipline in 
the sense of general discipline within a particular branch. 

In most branches of knowledge or fields of experience there 
is the added difficulty that the specific discipline, in place of 
failing to associate a general meaning with a general stimulus, 
establishes a relationship whose stimulus is concrete, not only 
in form of expression, but in its inclusiveness as well. Here 
the method by which the learner is made conscious of the 
general meaning of the stimulus depends upon whether the 
stimulus can be made just general enough in form to be useful, 
or whether there is no alternative between concrete stimuli 
and one too general to be useful. In the case of obedience 
there is such an alternative. The stimulus to obedience by 
which the habit is first formed may be highly -^j^g ^^^^ 
concrete — the mother's request twice repeated, generally 

the father's order sternly put or the command of a useful 

,. .,. "^ . , , , stimulus 

policeman or military superior, but each has as should re- 
its possible alternative not merely a harmful place the 
obedience to any command, but obedience to any coi^crete. 
order that is not evil given by one who has the right to com- 
mand the one to whom it is given. In this case, conscious- 
ness of the general meaning of the stimulus should be brought 
about through the persistent substitution of the generally 
useful form for the concrete one, and its equally persistent 
association with its general meaning. 

If this persistent repetition is necessary in the case of a 
simple general stimulus and its consequences, it is all the 
more necessary when the general stimulus itself consists of a 
sequence or group of general ideas. In this case two dis- 
tinct associations are to be made permanent, that of the parts 
of the stimulus with each other and that of the stimulus with 
its consequence. For example, the association of seaport with 
commerce is as incidental to geography as one of the axioms 
to geometry. But equally firm and mechanical association 



88 CULTURE DISCIPLINE AND DEMOCRACY 

of climate, physiography, natural products, manufactures, 
and commerce, in general logical sequence with a geographical 
description of any country, is not so incidental. Most 
children in a grammar school will follow some such outline 
as they study each country, and perhaps be questioned by 
their teacher into making "for themselves" a separate out- 
line for each, without gaining an iota in independent think- 
ing or advancing one step toward general discipline. If in 
connection with their first lesson on a country as a whole, 
however, they should mechanically memorize this general 
sequence in its general form, they would have something 
which they could be led to remember by and think with as 
they come to study the description of each new country. 
This is what the McMurrys and other Herbartians mean 
The essen- ^^ ^^^ ^'t3^e-study," but the type-study is fre- 
tial similar- quently Understood to be merely the selection of 
ityintype a typical thing and the teaching of it in detail, 
must be Minneapolis is a type of a manufacturing center, 
retained in but the detailed study of Minneapolis for several 

general ^^y^ ^jj| ^^^^ make it SO. First from all details 

form. 

related to it must be selected those that are 
common to most manufacturing centers — accessibility of raw 
material, cheap means of getting it to the manufacturing 
center, motive power, cheap means of getting the product to 
market. Then they should be certainly memorized and re- 
tained, in association with each other and with the judgment 
manufacturing center. Usually, if they are separated out and 
memorized at all, it is likely to be in the more narrowly useful 
form of wheat fields of Minnesota and surrounding states, 
Mississippi River and parallel railroad lines. Falls of St. 
Anthony, and the Great Lakes. The common sequence is not 
mastered in the general form which makes it common. 
This memorizing and retention of general groups of sequences 
is indispensable to the mastery of any branch of knowledge, 
and equally indispensable to the realization of the various 
specific aims included in direct preparation for life. It has 
been too largely ignored in each. 



CULTURE DISCIPLINE AND DEMOCRACY 89 

Finally, whether the relationship is a single relationship 

or a series of relationships, if the only general stimulus that 

can be substituted for the specific one with ^ variety of 

which it is first formed is so general that it may typical con- 

at times be harmful, the sole pedagogical alterna- <^^pt® stim- 

tive is the addition to it of a number of other alternative 

concrete and specific stimuli re-enforced, when for too 

possible, by cumulative impression whose relation gf.^e^al ^ 

stimulus* 
to general discipline remains to be discussed. The 

most useful habits of all, from the standpoint of mental 
development — observation, industry, synthesis, etc. — would 
be in part mutually exclusive, if their stimuli were put in 
the only general form which could be substituted for the 
particular concrete one peculiar to a particular branch of 
knowledge or field of experience. The student who becomes 
a trained observer in the field of chemistry or biology, could 
through the substitution in the accustomed stimulus to 
observation, of any sort of details in place of chemical or 
biological details, become so persistent an observer that he 
could neither work nor analyze. Indeed, it is from just this 
point of view that Mr. Bain criticizes drawing as the means 
to an observation which "clothes the particulars with such a 
degree of concrete interest that the mind prefers to remain in 
the concrete. "^^ "Interpreting indications by applying 
previous knowledge" — the means by which observation con- 
tributes to other useful habits — is, as he further points out, 
"a special training within a limited sphere." It is the func- 
tion of instruction to see that habits which thus tend to be- 
come too general in their application to be useful should have 
certainly associated with the stimuli of the spheres in which 
they are developed those of the spheres in which they will be 
most useful if they are carried over at all. While this should 
include the development of these relationships through the 
specific systems that directly further health, morality, citi- 
zenship, industrial efficiency, and other general phases of the 
educational aim, it is important to note that unlike those of 
the formal discipline many of the stimuli of the natural sci- 



90 CULTURE DISCIPLINE AND DEMOCRACY 

ences, literature, and history continue to recur in the every- 
day life of those who are not specialists, and hence that their 
habits often need not be carried over into life because they 
are already a part of it. 

From the standpoint of relationship, and hence of this 
entire discussion, the traditional distinction between content 
The con- ^^^ form emphasized by Professor Dewey^^ and 
ditions of recently reaffirmed by Professor Heck^^ is un- 
general necessary. Both content and form are dependent 
identical for upon a relationship or a set of relationships. In 
form and the case of content, the em.phasis is upon the 
content. resulting organization of the particulars that are 
in relationship; in that of form, upon the mental activity 
resulting from the relationship when it is habitual, and has a 
sufficiently general stimulus for it to be carried over into 
various fields of knowledge and experience. In either case, 
whether a general idea is accumulating and subordinating 
particulars or a general form of activity is being put to varied 
use, the conditions to application are the same. 

5. The Third Condition to General Discipline ^ Certain and 
Permanent Association of the General Stimulus, with 
Typical Applicatiofts 

The third condition to general discipline is certain and 
permanent association of the most useful general stimuli 
with a limited number of typical applications. 

In "application," the fifth of the five Herbartian formal 
steps, a relationship with a general stimulus is associated for 
the time being with such applications as occur to the teacher 
or the experience of the learners suggests. Its inadequacy 
is due to the fact that it usually stops short, first, of a repe- 
tition and review through which a varying number of the 
most useful and most typical applications are as firmly as 
possible associated with the general stimuli that are most 
useful; second, of a sufficiently many-sided relating of the 
general stimulus to common and individual experience to 
serve the purpose of varying apperception; and, third, of 



CULTURE DISCIPLINE AND DEMOCRACY 91 

the certain association, wherever possible, of an emotional 

center that will further cumulative impression. Each of 

these conditions to general discipline is worthy of separate 

discussion. 

It is not sufficient to determine into what fields a habit 

can be carried and into what fields it will be useful to carry it, 

but it must be certainly and permanently associated with a 

variety of its most essential applications, not only to increase 

the likelihood of its being carried over to them, but that 

through both their variety and certainty they may become 

the nucleus for a constantly growing field of application. 

Applications that are similar only through the stimulus in its 

most generally useful form, but in other ways strikingly dis- 

similar to each other, will reveal themselves more readily 

through their stronger similarity to some one of these fixed 

applications. To many individuals who think 

themselves honest and who would cheerfully association 

accept as the general stimulus to honest action with a 

realization of the fact that something is neither typical , 

morally nor legally their own, honesty merely con- increases 

sists in not stealing. If the general stimulus likelihood 

should be firmly and tenaciously associated in j. sf nf ral 
. "^ -^ discipline, 

their minds with lost property of others which 

they find, with a railroad or trolley ticket which a conductor 
has not collected, with money which they morally owe, but 
are not legally compelled to pay, with a set of ideas which 
will pass as their original contribution although they have 
gained them from some old book or distant thinker, they will 
not only tend to be more honest in the specific cases so as- 
sociated, but in others similar to each. 

6. The Fourth Condition to General Discipline, the Habit of 
Seeking Unaccustomed Applications for Each General 
Stimulus 

The fourth condition to general discipline is the habit of 
seeking for unaccustomed applications or fields of application 
for each essential general stimulus. 



92 CULTURE DISCIPLINE AND DEMOCRACY 

Each new application may not in itself become certain and 
habitual. As it does, it passes from the field of general dis- 
cipline and probable application to that of specifically useful 
habit. The most that can be done through the indirect 
furtherance of the aim is to make useful thought and action 
more probable. ''Adaptation" is rarer than application, 
because in its only certainly useful sense it reverses the proc- 
ess just described. Instead of a general stimulus being made 
less general but stronger through the addition of conditions 
peculiar to particular sets of situations, adaptation applies 
"Power of ^^^ usual sequences in a situation where the 
adaptation" stimulus can be recognized only in the most gen- 
dependent Q^^i form. The lost tourist, confronted with a 
ognition chasm and with retreat cut off, perishes if the 
of a general thought of bridge calls to mind only the accus- 
stimulus. tomed swinging structure of vines or ropes. The 
power of adaptation that saves him is the thought of any- 
thing on which he can cross, and hence the felling of a tree, 
so that it will reach to the other side. This ''sagacity" or 
"flash of recognition," while naturally possessed by some in- 
dividuals in uncommon degree, should be, so far as possible, 
developed in all. Students should be required to seek again 
and again for unaccustomed instances of each essential gen- 
eral stimulus in ordinary experience — especially in fields of 
experience where the instructor knows that it can be found. 
But where application is most vital, instruction must not 
depend upon "the power of adaptation," as, for example, 
Professor James confessedly did when he presented general 
psychological truths to teachers,''^ but upon the certainty and 
persistency of relationships which make application most 
probable. Adaptation in the sense of risking a modified 
sequence for a partially identical stimulus properly belongs 
to the discussion of analysis and synthesis as conditions to 
general discipline. 



CULTURE DISCIPLINE AND DEMOCRACY 93 

7. The Fifth Condition to General Discipline, Sufficient Emo- 
tionalizing of the General Stimulus to Make It a Center 
of Cumulative Impression. 

The fifth condition to general discipline is, that wherever 
useful, the general stimulus should be made an emotional 
center through its certain association with a few illustrations 
exceptionally strong in the common feeling necessary to cu- 
mulative impression, and its continual association with others 
less likely to be remembered, but certain to re-enforce the 
common feeling. 

Professor Bagley fixes upon the emotional general idea as 
the chief condition to the carrying over of habits. Professor 
Heck has pointed out, however, that there are many habits 
that carry over without emotional force behind them.'*^ 
He might have added from Mr. Bain's viewpoint, that there 
are habits with whose carrying over emotion might actually 
interfere — if it did not center upon the stimulus as opposed 
to various ideas associated with it. A development of inter- 
est in the subject-matter of mathematical problems, for 
example, does not necessarily aid in the application of a 
general principle that will solve them, and might, where it is 
strong and immediate, actually distract attention from the 
stimulus whose identification results in the mathematical 
judgment. On the other hand, where the vague feeling of 
ease or pleasure that springs from the ready recollection of a 
consequence by its stimulus is associated with the stimulus, 
its cumulative re-enforcement through other pleasurable 
impressions undoubtedly increases likelihood of application. 

But there are phases of life in which emotion plays a larger 

part, where the application of a habit is finally conditioned 

by the association of cumulative impression with 

its general stimulus. A habit v/hose stimulus determining 

is concrete and specific may operate without the condition 

added incentive of emotion, but in an emotional ^^ *^®. , 
- . n- 1 7 operation 01 

environment, where emotions conflict, the general opposing 

stimulus that is most strongly re-enforced by habits. 



94 CULTURE DISCIPLINE AND DEMOCRACY 

cumulative impression has the greatest HkeHhood of domi- 
nance. That is, emotion is not so much a condition to the 
carrying over of a habit, as to its operation in opposition to 
conflicting tendencies or habits. 

In incidental experience all sorts of habits gain this re-en- 
forcement from feeling and emotion. Through instruction 
only these relationships that are most generally and funda- 
mentally useful can become dominant through the force of a 
common feeling made well-nigh irresistible through cumula- 
tive impression. There must be a permanent association of 
each general stimulus with the fixed ideals, sentiments, beliefs, 
and impressions which give the individual his point of view 
and collectively constitute public opinion. To this end, the 
first step is the association with the general stimulus through 
repetition and allusion of a selected few of the incidents, 
experiences, stories, poems, and maxims most emotional 
through their form of expression, that will result in the com- 
mon feeling helpful to right application. It is this that old 
David Fordyce had in mind in his Dialogues on Education 
which, though written almost two centuries ago, still consti- 
tutes the keenest analysis of the conditions involved in 
moral education. *T think," he asserts, "it will be universally 
allowed that the associations or knots of ideas (if they so 
call them) which we join together in moral subjects, or those 
things which constitute our complex notion of happiness, are 
the cause of our right or wrong taste, the origin of motion 
to our passions, and consequently to our conduct, and the 
spring of our happiness or misery in life. It must, therefore, 
be an affair of the utmost importance in education to settle 
just associations in the minds of youth, and to break and 
disunite wrong ones. The doing this aright I take to be the 
grand art or engine of moral culture. It is in the imagina- 
tion, as I observed before, or in that middle faculty of the 
mind between sense and reflection, that those images of 
beauty and good are formed which sway our resolutions and 
guide our passions. Truth, unsupported by these or sepa- 
rate from them, makes but a faint impression on our minds. 



CULTURE DISCIPLINE AND DEMOCRACY 95 

Thus, let a miser be ever so much convinced that money is 
only the means of enjoyment, not the end, and that it is only 
valuable as far as it is useful for attaining that end; I say, let 
him be convinced of this as much as of the truth of any prop- 
osition in Euclid; still the images of his bags and shining 
metal, with all the annexed ideas of property, enjoyment, 
security against want, independence, and the like occur which 
make him fancy a happiness in the mere possession, separate 
and quite distinct from the use. In vain do you tell him that 
his happiness is a dream, that he hugs a mere phantom; he 
blesses himself in the delusion, and thinks your taste vicious, 
while he approves and acquiesces in his own. It must, there- 
fore, be of the last consequence to have a correct imagination, 
or, in other words, to unite the images of beauty and good 
with our perceptions of truth and nature. "^'^ 

The first step toward making useful relationships emotion- 
ally dominant is the sure association with their stimulus of a 
fixed nucleus of these ''images of beauty and Literature 
good," highly emotional in their form of expres- and the 
sion, which will tend to "sway our resolutions f^e c^hief 
and guide our passions." It is here that litera- means to 
ture and the fine arts perform their noblest ser- emotional 
vice. As the old Greek gained through Homer his °^^' 
ideals of citizenship, his standard of morality, and his rever- 
ence for the gods, so the Christian and the citizen of today 
can best gain his from what is highest and best in the spiritual 
inheritance of the race that world art and world literature 
have transmitted in the emotional form most likely to find 
individual expression in right living and heroic achievement. 

The second step toward their dominance is the persistent 
association with the fixed emotional center of a constantly 
accumulating mass of illustrations which in their aggregate 
will re-enforce the common feeling, even though they them- 
selves are forgotten. 

The relationships which are directly and usefully related 
to life alone possess the stimuli which can become strong 
through emotion. Whether found in science or in experience, 



96 CULTURE DISCIPLINE AND DEMOCRACY 

they, rather than grammatical constructions and logical 
formulas, are the true humanities. Mathematics, the 
languages, and the sciences can be emotionalized in their 
motives and incentives only when their relationships are 
directly useful to all learners, or when they have added to 
them the ideals of the specialist who makes his living by 
teaching them, or loves knowledge for the sake of knowledge. 
The boy or girl who studies them only for the sake of an 
ultimate general discipline has only the inspiration of work 
for work's sake, which in the young is an ideal to be devel- 
oped rather than one that can be put to the sternest strain. 

8. The Sixth Condition to General Discipline^ the Association 
of the General Stimulus, through Varying Apperception, 
with as Many Other Ideas and Activities as Possible 

The sixth condition to general discipline is association of 
the general stimulus, through varjring apperception, with as 
many other ideas and activities as possible. 

It is through varying apperception that the useful relation- 
ship having a general stimulus is provided with the system of 
intercommunication by which it can pass into any field of 
experience in which the stimulus can operate. It is through 
varying apperception that the stimulus may become the 
center for a useful concentration which both adds to its com- 
prehension and in a highly cumulative way multiplies again 
and again its likeHhood of recall. With this latter phase of 
its service, which through the growing many-sidedness of its 
general stimulus makes the relationship an increasingly domi- 
nating force, cumulative impression co-operates. Impres- 
sion, however, if it is to be cumulative, must constantly re- 
enforce a common feeling. Varying apperception may re- 
sult in a thousand conflicting feelings which may or may not 
re-enforce the common one, but which attract the useful re- 
lationship in a thousand different directions and make it more 
potent as it turns toward each. The certain association of 
a few typical applications with the general stimulus furthers 
varying apperception; the effort to discover new applications 



CULTURE DISCIPLINE AND DEMOCRACY 97 

utilizes it. But the Herbartian apperception and applica- 
tion must unite and become far more many-sided. If the 
general stimulus is a highly essential one, instruction should 
associate it not only with as many useful applications as pos- 
sible, but with all possible ideas which do not check its useful 
exercise or detract from the common feeling which tends to 
emotionalize it. Such many-sided association is something 
more than a condition favorable to useful general discipline. 
It is a means to culture and, as varying apperception is here 
limited to a useful general stimulus, it is a means to useful 
culture. 

Unless all of this var3dng apperception is to sink to the 
level of impression, it must be kept alive by adequate exercise 
throughout the entire course of instruction. The ^^5 varying 
continuity necessary to general discipline must appercep- 
be assured. The teaching of honesty, as has ^g^^^^f^J^g* 
been said before, must not be limited to the third stimulus in 
grade and truthfulness set aside for the sixth, the most 
Maxims, stories, examples, personal recollections, "^® " °^™* 
biographical incidents, talks, questions, allusions, poems, 
pictures, and songs — all associated with the general stimulus — 
tend to ensure the widest usefulness to a relationship. Al- 
though the varying apperception which results from them 
tends to generalization, it does not serve the same purpose 
to associate them with merely the general idea of honesty, 
because in the minds of individuals this general idea may 
limit itself to not stealing. Since it is the idea of not taking 
or retaining what is not morally one's own that must become 
many-sided, varying apperception must, from the very begin- 
ning, associate other ideas and activities with it, in place of 
being the means by which it is developed through their as- 
sociation with a narrower stimulus which they gradually 
broaden. However, the broader and more many-sided one's 
knowledge and experience, even in the mere sense of in- 
formation, held in mind by accidental or at least individual 
and varying relationships, the broader the field of possible 
application. If, in place of mere information, the details 
7 



98 CULTURE DISCIPLINE AND DEMOCRACY 

of knowledge and experience have been from time to time 
or even at some one time presented in relationship to the 
general stimulus, the probability of application is immensely 
increased. 

So far the conditions to general discipline that have been 
discussed bear upon the general stimulus itself. The remain- 
ing conditions have to do with the environments in which 
the general discipline is known to be most useful. Unlike 
/pijQ the foregoing ones, therefore, they increase the 

remaining probability of the carrying over of a relationship 
conditions Jj^^q particular fields without increasing the like- 
discipline lihood of it being carried over into all fields, 
bear upon From the standpoint of the field of application 
environ- ^-^Qy consequently apply with especial force to 
which it general application within the field of a specific 
may oper- discipline, such as a particular branch of mathe- 
^ ^* matics or a natural science. They may embrace 

any field, no matter how remote from the one in which the 
relationship was originally developed, but are little likely 
to aid application beyond it. From the standpoint of the 
relationship to be carried over, they especially apply to 
habits for which the most general possible stimulus would 
not be useful and yet which have no alternative between it 
and various specific stimuli. Among such habits the so- 
called formal relationships are conspicuous — industry, obser- 
vation, perseverance, and even analysis and synthesis. 
Relationships whose stimuli can be made as relatively general 
as may be useful are especially helped by the conditions 
already discussed. 



9. The Seventh Condition to General Discipline, Certain Asso- 
ciation with Each General Stimulus of the Knowledge 
Necessary to Its Identification and Application in the 
Most Useful of Its Concrete Forms 

The seventh condition to general discipline is certain asso- 
ciation with each general stimulus of the knowledge necessary 



CULTURE DISCIPLINE AND DEMOCRACY 99 

to its identification, and application in the most useful of its 
varying concrete forms. 

Inference is the connecting link between many-sidedness 
and general discipline. Some detail of an idea or an expres- 
sion suggests a general stimulus in part or as a whole. While 
many-sided knowledge may exist without leading through 
inference, analysis, and synthesis to application, general ap- 
plication can not exist without it. Each without the other is 
relatively useless. The usefulness of knowledge is restricted 
to incidental and individual "thinking"; the usefulness of 
the general stimulus, to instances in which it has been ade- 
quately applied in some concrete form. If to interest in the 
application of a general stimulus is added its permanent 
association with certain fields of knowledge, application 
within these fields is highly probable. The habitual seeking 
of instances in every possible field still further increases 
the likelihood of its being carried over. 

But no interest, or habit of seeking out similarities, or 
natural ''sagacity" can bring about identification of a stimu- 
lus which is disguised by unfamiliar terminology or experience, 
or application which requires knowledge as yet unacquired. 
The first difficulty that a child has with problem work in 
school is that he does not know whether to add or subtract, 
because he has not associated the idea of more or less with 
such common terms as buy, sell, lose, find, give, spend, and so 
on. Such a series of connecting links as multiplicand, hun- 
dreds, base, and cost, between the general stimulus and each 
of its highly useful concrete forms, must be certainly retained 
or the habits connected with the latter are no longer applica- 
tions at all. Such terms as suffrage, ballot, Australian sys- 
tem, polls, and voter's assistant, together with knowledge of 
facts called for in registration and qualifications required by 
particular offices, and the fundamental issues of a particular 
campaign, are necessary before one can apply the habit of 
casting an intelligent and honest vote. It is the fact that 
there can be no analysis without knowledge of details that 
makes the habit of analysis and synthesis, soon to be discussed. 



loo CULTURE DISCIPLINE AND DEMOCRACY 

so specific a thing. It has to be formed anew with each new 
field of appUcation, and is conditioned by the detailed knowl- 
edge possessed in each field. 

The vocabulary and the knowledge essential to identifica- 
tion and application in the most useful instances must be 
certainly mastered, and no opportunity must be lost to famil- 
iarize even partially and temporarily the mass of individuals 
with the terminology and information necessary to the most 
extensive application that is useful. It will not be fully 
mastered in formal instruction, but having once been in 
consciousness will either remain as partial concepts that 
can be made more adequate, or forgotten facts that may be 
at least vaguely recognized and more readily retained if 
they are re-presented. 

Those certainly retained constitute a special phase of 
specific discipline and of the essential content as distinct from 
the information, which is the basis for varying apperception 
and mere remembrance. The others must be included among 
the useful relationships in which all "optional" knowledge 
and experience are to be presented, even though through lack 
of repetition necessary to make such relationships permanent 
they will be individually and variously apperceived or re- 
tained. 

Within the academic subject, in particular in the abstract 

subject, however, the limit to the amount of knowledge that 

The limited should be associated with the general stimulus 

amount of lies in interference with the repetition necessary 

concrete ^^ ^^le certainty of essential habits. Where, as 

knowleoKe 

mathemat- ^^ the case of arithmetic, for example, the stimulus 

ically use- to application is so general that its exercise results 
^ ' from the occasional necessities of every-day life 

rather than from the identification of a stimulus which is ever 
present, the mastery of all sorts of complex subject-matter 
remote from the life of the pupil adds unnecessary difficulties 
to a task difficult enough in itself. The so-called ''new arith- 
metic" of the Herbartians, with its applications to the details 
of technical and specialized occupations unfamiliar to the 



CULTURE DISCIPLINE AND DEMOCRACY loi 

general student, closely approaches this limit, if it has not 
left it behind. 

In the case of observation and analysis, knowledge of details 
is more obviously essential. The observer trained systemati- 
cally to note the details of chemistry and of physics may 
attempt to observe with equal care in botany, but is 
blind to much that the expert botanist can see. It was 
not merely for the sake of the habit of observation that 
Agassiz made a new student work for several weeks on 
one dead fish. 

lo. The Eighth Condition to General Discipline, the Habit oj 
Analysis in Each Essential Field of Application, To- 
gether with the Habit of Analysis and Synthesis on the 
Recognition of Any Part of a General Stimulus, with a 
View to Its Identification as a Whole. 

The eighth condition to general discipline is the formation 
of the habit of analysis in each of the fields in which it is most 
essential that a general stimulus should be identified, and on 
the recognition of any part of a familiar stimulus in any field, 
the habit of analysis and synthesis with a view to the identi- 
fication of the stimulus as a whole. 

I use the terms "analysis" and "synthesis" with due regard 
for Professor Dewey's distinction between an analysis and 
synthesis purely mechanical and quantitative, and an anal- 
ysis which means "selective emphasis," and a synthesis which 
means "the interpretation of what is selected. "^^ 

The habit of analysis necessary to useful general discipline 
is something less than the habit of observation ; and the habit 
of synthesis, something more. Analysis does not require the 
exhaustive and systematic noting of details peculiar to all 
observation, useful for retention and complete recall, but 
merely the noting of details until some stimulus or part of a 
possible stimulu.:. appears. Observation, unlike synthesis, 
does not require I'te constant combination and recombina- 
tion of the identifiovl and hence suggestive part with other 



I02 CULTURE DISCIPLINE AND DEMOCRACY 

details until the stimulus as a whole is identified. As pointed 
out by Alexander Bain, drawing results in an observation 
which, having reproduction for its aim, is little likely to be 
synthetic. The analysis worth while from the standpoint of 
general discipline is what Dr. Adams shows to be true of the 
''observation" of Sherlock Holmes — not observation in the 
usual sense at all, but analysis followed by S3mthesis and 
reassociation.^^ 

Sometimes the possibility of application in a seemingly 
remote environment flashes upon a thinker through the selec- 
tion and identification of some detail that forms 
commonly P^^^ ^^ ^^^ Stimulus. That is, what Professor 
due to tern- James used to call ' 'sagacity" comes into play, 
porary in- More frequently one is confronted with a propo- 
the habit of sition or situation as a whole which gives some 
analyzing hint as to the sort of stimulus that should be 
l^r^fi^dT" identified — an original problem in geometry where 
analysis will separate out equal lines and angles, 
or a new city with possible factors that in combination form 
the stimulus for the judgment "manufacturing center." 
From the standpoint of sagacity, on the other hand, applica- 
tion has no limit. In an environment not formerly associa- 
ted with it, a flash of insight suggests the usual stimulus to 
some habit or relationship that may be brought into play. 
In either case, analysis and synthesis must follow. But the 
cue to purposeful analysis is usually the presence of a situa- 
tion or proposition which presents some temporary interest or 
which one has formed the habit of analyzing. That is, 
general discipline will not only fail to operate where one is 
ignorant of details, but in combinations of familiar details to 
which one has not formed the habit of carrying over relation- 
ships, or in which one is not otherwise interested. Here it is 
plain, on the one hand, that the many-sidedness of interest 
to which apperception gives rise is a condition to the incidental 
operation of general discipline, and on the other, that in place 
of the impossible habit of analyzing every environment with 
which one is confronted, must be substituted the habits of 



CULTURE DISCIPLINE AND DEMOCRACY 103 

analyzing the particular situations to which the relationships 
made certain through direct preparation for life must be ap- 
plied. 

Where the stimulus is not composite, analysis is all that is 
necessary for its identification. If the habit has been cer- 
tainly formed, the identification of its stimulus Recognition 
will at once result in its operation, but where the of parts of a 

stimulus is composite, recognition of its several co^iposite 

1 • -.1 •, •. • 1 j-r stimulus 

parts by no means carries with it its identmca- must be 

tion as a whole. Two sides of one triangle may be followed by 
recognized as equal to two sides of another, and ^y^^^^^^s- 
the included angle of the one may be recognized as equal to 
that of the other without sides and angles .being combined 
into the familiar stimulus "two sides and the included angle." 
Here, again, there can be no habit of synthesizing all details, 
but rather the habit of combining and recombining details 
in fields of knowledge and experience where the habits to be 
applied may be expected to usefully operate. Information 
or experience in most minds embraces far too many details 
for their occurrence to be accepted as a general stimulus to 
either analysis or synthesis. Indeed, except in the case of a 
monomaniac, varying interest and attention would make 
this impossible. Conditioned, as general discipline is, by 
habits whose stimuH cannot be general, the only certainty of 
its useful operation is in making analysis and synthesis 
habitual in the specific field to which general disciphne is to 
carry other habits. 

In the case of the more concrete stimulus, identification 
may be direct, or partial identification may precede analysis 
and suggest it. The identification of a more abstract 
stimulus in concrete form, however, not only requires analysis, 
but the analysis is itself conditioned by knowledge of the 
concrete details of which the stimAilus is a part, or of the spe- 
cific response for which it is the signal. For example, to 
solve a problem through the fundamental principles of per- 
centage the habits of synthesis and analysis must be associ- 
ated with any problem in which hundredths figure. The 



I04 CULTURE DISCIPLINE AND DEMOCRACY 

readily apparent presence of the rate per cent, is itself the 
signal for analysis, with a view to identifying the stimulus of 
which it is the whole or a part. If the rate per cent, itself 
is to be determined, it in itself at once becomes the whole 
stimulus to the division of the percentage by the base. If 
not, its recognition as a partial stimulus should become the 
first step in an analysis which finally supplies cost or gain, 
amount purchased or commission, etc., followed by a syn- 
thesis which completes the stimulus as per cent, and base, per 
cent, and percentage, one plus the per cent, and the "amount" 
or one less the per cent, and the "difference." The failure of 
pupils to identify the stimulus as a whole after partially 
recognizing it in the per cent, may be due to the absence of 
the habit of analysis, but more frequently to the absence of 
the habit of synthesis or to lack of knowledge of the terms 
which denote the whole number of hundreds on which the 
per cent, is taken and the number resulting from the taking 
of the per cent. If pupils have never been taught the prin- 
ciples of percentage at all, and are wholly dependent upon 
the more abstract stimulus of multiplicand and multiplier, 
multiplier and product, or product and multiplicand, not only 
must analysis and synthesis become associated with any 
The most problem involving times more or division into 
general equal parts, but further and more difficult analy- 
stlmulus ^^^ ^^^ synthesis become necessary without a 
most use- knowledge of details becoming any less essential. ! 
ful poten- The most general stimulus that is useful is always 
the con- ^^^ most useful, and in number the most abstract 
Crete more stimulus is always potentially the most useful, 
certain. because a numerical stimulus cannot become too 

general. But the more concrete stimulus is the more certain. 
To identify cost and rate of gain or rate of commission and 
commission requires less complex analysis than to identify 
multiplicand and multiplier or multiplier and product, and 
ensures readier judgment than when cost and rate of gain 
have to suggest base and rate, and base and rate, multipli- 
cand and multiplier, before the judgment "multiply" results. 



CULTURE DISCIPLINE AND DEMOCRACY 105 

This is one reason why each general stimulus must be 
certainly and permanently associated with a few of its most 
useful and suggestive applications. Thus associated, how- 
ever, they are not merely specific and, hence, certain habits, 
but serve to make easier recognition of the general stimulus in 
similar concrete forms. 

Academic analysis and synthesis are readily associated with 
the fields in which they are academically useful: mathemat- 
ical problems, flowers, forms of life, minerals, chemical sub- 
stances, movements, and forces. That is, the analysis 
and synthesis necessary to general discipline within a so-called 
"specific discipline" can be readily made habitual. This is in 
part true of the ''specific discipline" necessary to direct prep- 
aration for life, which may or may not include the academic 
disciplines. The analysis and synthesis necessary to morals, 
health, industrial efficiency, social service, good q 1 j- 
citizenship, and right avocation must be associ- preparation 
ated with particular phases of diet, respiration, ensures an- 
clothing, particular occupation, government, or synthesis 
public welfare. From the standpoint of general outside the 
discipline, the fundamental difference between the academic 
habits of analysis and synthesis due to specific 
academic discipline and those due to equally systematic and 
specific preparation for some phase of life, is that the mastery 
of the academic discipline does not demand that they shall 
be carried over into life in general outside the fields in which 
they can be certainly associated, and that the direct prep- 
aration for life does. It is not necessary to a pure science 
that it shall be applied at all. 

On the other hand, the habit of analysis and synthesis 
necessary to carrying over as a means to direct preparation is 
identical with the habit necessary to such general analysis and 
synthesis as may be useful — that is, the certain association 
with the identification of any detail as part of a general 
stimulus, of analysis and synthesis with a view to the identi- 
fication of the stimulus as a whole. While analysis and syn- 
thesis in the academic subject, and more especially in the 



Io6 CULTURE DISCIPLINE AND DEMOCRACY 

formal discipline, can be thus suggested by the partial identi- 
fication of some stimulus, all that academic proficiency re- 
quires is that they shall be suggested, as already pointed out, 
by the presence of the particular type of material ordinarily 
associated with them. Language will suggest the analysis 
necessary to grammatical or rhetorical form. Matter of a 
particular kind will suggest the analysis and synthesis of 
botany, zoology, or geology; and particular manifestations of 
matter, that of chemistry or physics. The object of the 
academic study is not to make as independent and probable 
as possible the carrying over of its relationships into every 
useful field, but to make the learner capable of applying them 
whenever he is called upon to do so. That is, outside of the 
academic subject matter itself, the aim is not self-activity 
and a continual analysis and synthesis on the recognition of 
any part of the usual stimulus, but the ability to analyze and 
synthesize if application is demanded. While an industrial 
specialist or a specialist in pure science may seek new applica- 
tions, the general student trained in chemistry, for example, 
either brings it to bear in explanation of phenomena with 
which it has already been associated, or in the solution of some 
problem with which he has actually been confronted, obvi- 
ously chemical in its explanation. 

Now, although the habits of analysis and synthesis neces- 
sary to morality, health, industrial efficiency, social service, 
good citizenship, and even right avocation are in part like 
those involved in academic study suggested by specific kinds 
of experience, they most frequently operate not only when the 
specific phase of experience which suggests them is lacking, but 
when the specific experience presented is strongly suggestive 
of other groups and systems of thought which tend to exclude 
them. For example, the failure of a street railway conductor 
to collect a fare may suggest official carelessness and con- 
sequently failure to call out streets, lack of courtesy and so on 
— a sufficiently potent group of ideas to distract attention 
from the passenger's personal responsibility for payment, 
unless the very idea of fare in part, at least, suggests it. 



CULTURE DISCIPLINE AND DEMOCRACY 107 

and raises the question of honesty. If it does, analysis 
and synthesis must at once determine the presence or 
absence of the general stimulus to the judgment honest 
or dishonest. 

The various specific phases of direct preparation for life 
differ widely in the extent to which they can, like the aca- 
demic subjects, depend upon specific forms of experience to 
suggest analysis and synthesis. More than this, it is possible 
to ensure the carrying over of habits of analysis and synthesis 
from the academic subjects. But with the former it is essen- 
tial; with the latter, artificial. Just as the formal subjects, 
through their essential certainty and system, favor specific 
discipline, so do the systems of relationship made equally 
certain in their furtherance of every-day life, naturally favor 
general discipline. 

A minor distinction unfavorable to the study of the 

abstract subjects as a means to general discipline lies in 

the fact that the specific kind of experience 

which suggests their habits of analysis and syn- requires 

thesis is for the most part concrete and tan- analysis 

gible — word forms, symbols, lines and ansjles, unassisted 
^ . Ill r T -I ^y concrete 

objects and other phenomena 01 sense, while details pres- 

both life and direct preparation for it require entin 

a far greater proportion of analysis and syn- ^^^^^^l^^^ 

thesis of ideas unassisted by things. 

Finally, although in both the formal subjects and direct 
preparation for life, the association of cumulative impression 
with a general stimulus, its apperception as a center for 
concentration, its certain association with various typical 
fields and frequent association with favorable fields outside 
its own, and frequent effort to discover new applications, may 
point the way to analysis and s)mthesis where they will be 
most useful; they are naturally developed in the abstract or 
even the academic subject only through specialization, while 
they are as essential to direct preparation for life as is 
specific discipline itself. 

In both academic work and that directly preparatory to 



Io8 CULTURE DISCIPLINE AND DEMOCRACY 

life, innate interests, varying interests, and the interest that 
Varying in- ^^ises from even temporary concentration should 
terest a be utilized as a favorable condition for analytical 
favorable ^j^j synthetical work with a view to general 
analysis discipline. The fact that analysis, like observa- 
and syn- tion, when effectively exercised in one field, is for 
thesis. ^YiQ time being at least less probable in any other, 

merely emphasizes the importance of temporary or changing 
interests and concentrations. This is why thesis work, involv- 
ing weeks of research, possesses such marked advantages over 
frequent and unimpressive papers which are necessarily mere 
compilations or transpositions, valuable mainly from the 
standpoint of written repetitions of facts and drill in form of 
expression. 

The habit of analysis and synthesis certainly associated 
with the identification of any part of a general stimulus is the 
best antidote for "too hasty interference" and "jumping at 
conclusions." Wherever there is opportunity for it, each 
part of the stimulus as a whole must be identified before the 
sequence or the habit results. The very "hastiness" and the 
tendency to "jump" are invaluable if they lead toward the 
stimulus as a whole instead of skipping over to its con- 
sequences. 

Where certain parts of the familiar general stimulus are 
found to be missing, drill in adaptation should be substituted 
Value of the ^^^ application. Here, adaptation, in place of 
drill in being dependent upon a sufficiently general 

adaptation stimulus, takes the form of noting whether or not 
scientific the variation in the stimulus does or does not 
experimen- seriously modify the ascertained result, or of 
tation. actually attempting variation in the stimulus with 

a view to a desirable modification of the result. All experi- 
mental sciences involve adaptation as certainly as they ensure 
application. The drill necessary to the formation of this 
habit, however, not only does not demand the mastery of 
any one of them as a whole, but the modified stimulus or result 
which is a signal for its operation will be associated with more 



CULTURE DISCIPLINE AND DEMOCRACY 109 

fields of experience, and general application made more prob- 
able, if the habit is formed through experimentation with 
material selected from a variety of sciences. 

On the contrary, mathematics as an exact science tends to 
make the individual so certain of his judgment in the absence 

of the modifyinsf conditions which its abstract- _ _ ^, 

,..•^1 1 .1 -r • r Mathemat- 

ness elimmates, that on the identmcation ot a jcs in itself 

familiar stimulus as a whole the usual judgment ill-suited to 
is likely to follow with an inexorability and self- h^bu^o^ * ^ 
confidence which leave no room for adaptation, adaptation 
After all, human nature is such that the easiest ^^ truth- 
habit to carry over from mathematics to life in 
general is a strongly increased confidence in the infallibility 
of one's own conclusions. The common impression that, some- 
how or other on account of its exactness, the study of mathe- 
matics tends to make one more truthful, fails to take this 
tendency into account. If exactness results in a narrowmind- 
edness that focuses attention on the correctness of small de- 
tails of life, without the due sense of proportion and the 
broader perspective of which modifying conditions form a 
part, the resulting truth is partial and misleading. It is 
well to remember that the exact science which has made the 
most helpful contribution to modern logic is in itself alone 
inadequate not only as a general discipline for reasons al- 
ready discussed, but from the standpoint of adaptation and of 
truthfulness. Life is not abstract. Its conclusions are con- 
tinually being modified by its many-sidedness, and its exact 
statements, though true in themselves, are often the farthest 
swing of the pendulum from whole truths. 



CHAPTER IV 

THE COMPARATIVE USELESSNESS OF THE OLD "DISCIPLIN- 
ARY" OR ''formal" SUBJECTS TO ALL PHASES OF 
FORMAL SELF-ACTIVITY EXCEPT SPECIFIC DISCIPLINE 

The necessity for this complex analysis of educational self- 
activity now stands revealed. A discipline no longer formal 
in the traditional sense cannot be the sole alternative and 
complement of knowledge and culture. In the new sense of 
general discipline, it is only one among several forms of educa- 
tional or formal self-activity, all of which are interrelated and 
interdependent. Apperception also is too vague a term to 
displace it, even when used in as inclusive a sense as formal 
discipline itself. Varying apperception is the complement of 
specific discipline, and with it and cumulative impression a 
necessary condition to general discipline. Mere remembrance 
is the initial step by which experience that does not fade away 
into impression becomes specific discipline and varying ap- 
perception. 

I. The Usefulness of an Idea or Activity Dependent Upon the 
Relationships in Which It Is Retained and Recalled 
From the standpoint of instruction, knowledge depends for 
its usefulness solely upon the relationships in which it is 
mastered. In forgotten relationships it gives rise to impression 
which as common feeling centered upon a useful idea becomes 
cumulative in its force and creates an emotional center. In 
partial relationships, it results in mere remembrance which 
holds an idea in mind, usually in incidental associations 
varying with individuals, until its relationships are multiplied 
by varying apperception or made certain by specific discipline. 
In many-sided relationships it produces varying apperception 
through which it may be carried over to any other directly or 

110 



CULTURE DISCIPLINE AND DEMOCRACY iii 

indirectly related ideas, and they concentrated upon it. 
In definite and certain relationships, it leads to specific disci- 
pline, on which the permanence of all fixed relationships, the 
usefulness of varying apperception, and the possibility and 
usefulness of general discipline depend. Even here it emerges 
from information only as its relationships result in system. 
In definite and specific relationships having a general stimulus, it 
furthers general discipline, the only means by which the cer- 
tainly useful can be applied in all possible fields of experience. 

2. The Usefulness of Relationships Can Be Measured Only 
Through Degree of Inherent Sensation or Emotion that 
is Useful, the Number of Relationships in Which They 
are Potentially Useful, and the Number of Their Useful 
Recurrences in Every-day Life 
Now if by usefulness is meant either direct or indirect fur- 
therance of the educational aim, the usefulness of a single 
relationship or a system of relationships, whether of knowl- 
edge or activities, can be measured only through the degree 
of useful sensation or feeling inherent in it, the number of 
relationships in which it is potentially useful, and the fre- 
quency of its recurrence in such relationships in every-day life. 
In cumulative impression the degree of inherent sensation or 
feeling is determining; in mere remembrance and varying 
apperception, possible many-sidedness of relationship and fre- 
quency of recurrence; in general discipline, all three. Here 
interest, many-sidedness, and frequency of recurrence not only 
unite to increase the probability of usefulness, but through 
greater impressiveness and likelihood of repetition themselves 
tend to ensure certainty. Either for a single relationship or 
a system of relationships, whether regarded as a whole or as 
an aggregate of the parts and relationships which comprise 
it, the test is the same. That is, a specific system of knowl- 
edge and activities can be evaluated in part and as a whole 
through the aggregate worth of component single relation- 
ships, measured by sensational or emotional appeal, many- 
sidedness, and recurrence. 



112 CULTURE DISCIPLINE AND DEMOCRACY 

3. Since the Relationships Directly Useful in Highest Degree 
Are Capable of Being Indirectly Useful in the Highest 
Degree, the General Course of Study Must Emphasize 
Subjects Containing a High Proportion of Directly Useful 
Material 

Holding in mind the fundamental distinction, ignored by 
Mr. Spencer but pointed out by W. H. Payne and others 
among his critics, between what is useful to the race through 
the specialist and what is directly useful to all, it is clear that 
every branch of human knowledge will continue to figure in 
the course of study. Most have subject-matter directly or 
indirectly useful to all. Some contain material useful only 
through the specialist. But general education will exclude all 
subjects as wholes which are useful to all as wholes, through 
their disciplinary value alone. More than this, all learners, 
including the specialist, must master, on the one 
tration^' hand, the subject-matter directly preparatory to 
through life, and, on the other, that which is essential to 
special- useful general discipline. The present tendency 

inadequate toward a paralleling of a many-sided course of 
remedy for study with intensive work in two or three formal 
ineffective subjects required in common of all might be peda- 
gogical, were it not for two facts. On the one 
hand, the formal subjects have been demonstrated to be not 
only unnecessary to general discipline, but to a limited extent 
disadvantageous to it. On the other, the systematic organi- 
zation of material with a view to direct preparation for life 
has just as certainly been demonstrated to involve the forma- 
tion of all habits that should be generally applied, and to be 
to a serious extent essential to the general application of 
useful habits wherever they may have been formed. If the 
truth of these two propositions has been demonstrated, the 
traditional position of the abstract subjects and that of those 
more directly preparatory to life must be reversed. The 
abstract subjects must become the electives, and the subjects 
directly preparatory to life the required subjects. As re- 



CULTURE DISCIPLINE AND DEMOCRACY 113 

gards the necessity for direct preparation, no demonstration 
is necessary. As regards the superior efficiency of direct in- 
struction as a means to the indirect furtherance of the edu- 
cational aim through the formal phases or educational forms 
of self-activity, recapitulation cannot but be convincing. 

4. The Study of the Formal Subjects But Little Favorable to 
Phases oj Formal Self -activity Other Than Specific Discipline 

From this point of view, the advantage of the old "formal 
subjects" over the academic branches lies in the fact that they 
are formal through their essential organization and the 
method inherent in their organization. Their adequate mas- 
tery compels the certain and systematic specific discipline 
which in other subjects is far more largely dependent upon 
pedagogic method and not inherent in an inevitable organiza- 
tion of their subject matter. While in the case of other aca- 
demic subjects the same certainty and system are possible 
through pedagogic method, in direct preparation for life it 
must be compelled. Morality and religion, health, industrial 
efficiency, and citizenship cannot be adequately taught un- 
less they are formally taught in the true sense — with each 
form of educational self -activity certainly developed, includ- 
ing a more certain and more systematic specific discipline than 
that of a branch of mathematics or a language. At this 
point, however, the formal subject has the right to throw 
down the gauntlet which direct preparation can only theo- 
retically pick up until the necessary organization has become 
actual. 

From the standpoint of general discipline and all other 
formal phases of self-activity, the supremacy of mathematics 
and the languages is irretrievably lost, while that of direct 
preparation for life is irresistibly destined to become more 
complete. Cumulative impression, both in itself and as a 
favorable condition to general discipline, demands subject 
matter which is inherently emotional or which is made so 
through its form of expression. This involves, in place of the 
formal subjects or in addition to them, the utilization through 
8 



114 CULTURE DISCIPLINE AND DEMOCRACY 

direct instruction of selections both from emotional experi- 
ence and literature and art, made on account of their emo- 
tional expression of ideas which should dominate life and 
character. Artistic expression and appreciation, as distinct 
from emotional sensibility and aesthetic enjoyment, are from 
this point of view not essential to the mass of individuals, and, 
indeed, are possible in any high degree only to the specialist 
— on the side of appreciation, the specialist in culture, on that 
of expression, the specialist in art. In fact, since analysis 
and discrimination tend to lessen emotion, both sensibility 
and aesthetic enjoyment may actually be lessened through 
artistic training. 

Mere remembrance, dependent as it is on connection with 
individual experience, like the varying apperception which 
it conditions, finds little encouragement in abstract subject 
matter. It helps more in the mastery of the abstract subject 
matter than the abstract subject matter helps in developing 
it in every-day life. That is, any idea, no matter how ab- 
stract, may be temporarily held in mind in some incidental 
or even ridiculous association. But it is the subject matter 
full of vastly more concrete details than can be certainly 
remembered that profits most from mere remembrance and 
makes the most useful contribution to it. 

5. The Limited Contribution to Formal Self -activity Resulting 
From the Elementary Study of a Foreign Language 
Even in the case of language, it is only in the general sense 
of the partial mastery of mere words in the vernacular and 
Mere re- ^^t through grammatical terminology or tech- 
membrance nique that it makes its fundamental contribution 
and vary-^ ^^ mere remembrance. Both mere remembrance 
ception and varying apperception, however, are aided 

furthered by the mastery of a foreign language in the in- 
use^^f a^^^^ strumental sense. They are not materially 
foreign furthered through the process of mastery, except 

language. jj^ ^j^g added associations given words through 
etymology, and a broadening of their information and inter- 



CULTURE DISCIPLINE AND DEMOCRACY 115 

ests through the translating of passages that could have been 
far more readily acquired in the vernacular. The increased 
many-sidedness comes through the mastery of a language 
as a ready means of gaining knowledge and experience not 
accessible in the vernacular, or of adding to that which is. 
Thomas Arnold's appeal for the classics, in so far as it was not 
disciplinary, was made from this point of view: "Expell 
Greek and Latin from your schools, and you confine the 
views of the existing generation to themselves and their 
immediate predecessors. Aristotle and Plato and Thucy- 
dides and Cicero and Tacitus are most untruly called ancient 
writers. They are virtually our own countrymen and con- 
temporaries, but have the advantage which is enjoyed by 
intelligent travelers, that their observation has been exercised 
in a field out of the reach of common men, and that having 
thus seen in a manner with our eyes, what we cannot see for 
ourselves, their conclusions are such as bear upon our own 
circumstances."^^ But as Alexander Bain pointed out, with 
the exception of a certain aesthetic quality inherent in the 
form of a language as distinct from the thought which it 
expresses, its whole benefit from this instrumental point of 
view, its culture and its knowledge, can be acquired through 
the reading of what others have translated.^ Since, as 
President Hall's investigations have helped in- g^^j^ ready 
dicate, the mass of students in high school and use involves 
in college fail to attain either the degree or the continuous 
stage of advancement at which a language be- 
comes instrumental, it follows that either more thorough 
instruction or more time must be given to those whose mas- 
tery is attempted. This, as in the case of discipline, justi- 
fies concentration, but, like it, not a concentration required 
in common of all students. The knowledge, the culture, and 
the experience that cannot be obtained through the vernacu- 
lar are in America necessary only to the specialist. This fact 
is recognized by the present requirement that each arts and 
science student shall master one or two languages, without 
the specification of any particular one. If no one language 



Ii6 CULTURE DISCIPLINE AND DEMOCRACY 

opens the way to a knowledge, culture, and experience which, 
in addition to what is furnished through the vernacular, 
must be required of all, it follows that the requirement of one 
or two is wholly unjustifiable. A particular one might be 
required of all on the ground of its special fitness for a dis- 
cipline peculiar to language study in general. This peculiar 
discipline, however, reduces itself to linguistic habits which 
can carry over from one language to another, of which the 
carrying over the habit of noticing the spelling of foreign 
words to English words is one of the most practical examples. 
But quite aside from the further arguments developed in the 
present discussion, Mr. Bain long ago demonstrated that 
language study involves no general discipline exclusively its 
own,^^ which applies outside the linguistic field itself. It is 
true, of course, that a large proportion of individuals need 
Ready use some language or languages other than their 
of foreign own for the sake of knowledge and experience 
language ^^^ possible through the vernacular alone — for 
many, but the sake of travel, for the pleasure of some specific 
not to be re- culture, for the sake of some industry or vocation, 
quired of all. ^^^ ^-^q sake of some field of advanced study. 
This means, however, that the majority will necessarily elect 
some language or be required to take it as a condition to some 
phase of specialization, and not that the study of foreign 
language, especially of a specified foreign language, shall be 
required of all. 

6. The Limitation to the Formal Value of Mathematical Study 

While a certain proportion of the instructors in mathemat- 
ics who responded to the questionnaire of the American 
sub-committee of the international commission on the teach- 
ing of mathematics insist on the cultural value of the subject, 
the majority ignore this phase of its possible usefulness alto- 
gether.^^ This is significant of the limited extent to which 
many-sidedness is inherent in mathematical study. Obvi- 
ously, it neither abounds in a wealth of ideas and activities 
which will add to the apperceiving mass through incidental 



CULTURE DISCIPLINE AND DEMOCRACY 117 

association with others, nor in ideas which incidentally re- 
membered will constitute centers for varying apperception. 
As a pure science, its details certainly associated with each 
other give rise to specific discipline rather than to continually 
changing relationships. From the standpoint of application 
and general discipline, however, it is necessary to examine into 
the extent to which it demands varying apperception, and so 
promotes its development through reorganizing the subject 
matter of more concrete subjects. 

If any branch of mathematics is related to life in a many- 
sided way, it is arithmetic. As has been already pointed out, 
however, the stimulus to arithmetical operation 

is too general for a varying association of number The general 

• 1 . . , r , „ ., , . 1 application 

or numerical prmciples with all possible ideas to of mathe- 

serve any useful arithmetical purpose. In gen- matics inde- 
eral experience it is not recognition of the presence fn^ruction 
of number or the possibility of operation that 
should suggest operation, but the need of it. The few fields 
in which each mathematical principle is usefully and cer- 
tainly applied in the every-day life of the majority of learners 
are, of course, definitely associated with it as part of the 
specific discipline of the subject. Even this can be overdone, 
as in the old association of percentage with brokerage, foreign 
exchange, and duties on imports. The experience and vocab- 
ulary essential to such applications belong to the specialist. 
It is not the possibility of teaching mathematical subject 
matter in many-sided relationships with life in general that 
is questioned, but its necessity to arithmetic and its useful- 
ness to varying apperception. Dr. Eugene Smith, himself 
chairman of the sub-committee mentioned above, with Her- 
bartian skill has associated arithmetical principles with a 
great variety of technical processes and other forms of 
specialized experience. Such association, however, though 
common in many modern text-books, is not necessary to as 
general application as is useful. In many instances the 
vocabulary and experience involved belong to the specialist, 
and are of necessity associated with the general principle 



Ii8 CULTURE DISCIPLINE AND DEMOCRACY 

when he needs it in his work or his avocation. In others, 
they are already famiUar to the pupils and need not be spe- 
cially associated with the habitual arithmetical analysis 
Number too necessary to the identification of the required 
general in principle. On the other hand, many-sided appli- 
its applica- cation is useless in the development of varying 
call many- apperception whenever it is too general to call 
sided asso- varying experience to mind. The fact that dol- 
ciations. j^j,g ^^^ trilobites have been separately added or 
have been separately associated with the idea of addition, 
unites them by a connecting link which, being suggestive of 
all objects and possible of suggestion by all, is little likely to 
bridge over the gap between any two. That is, number, 
neither suggesting its concrete applications nor being sug- 
gested by them, is little likely to associate them with each 
other, while its more concrete associations are not numerical 
associations at all. Outside its own subject matter, arith- 
metic can develop var3dng apperception as it can develop 
general discipline, but in both cases unnecessarily from the 
standpoint of varying apperception and general discipline. 
Its very demand of certainty makes varying association less 
likely, because practically all of its subject matter being made 
certain, there is little left for incidental remembrance and 
apperception. What is true of arithmetic is true of the 
higher mathematics as well. Mr. Bain summed the whole 
matter up when he said, ''In the point of view of information, 
the uses of mathematics are more obvious; but these uses 
when carried to their utmost stretch, suppose special profes- 
sions." He further asserts, however, that ''In the examples 
of arithmetical and algebraic operations, much valuable 
The limit practical knowledge is incidentally obtained, and 
to the use more might be done to turn the opportunity to 

of mathe- account."^"^ Dr. Smith has been wisely turning 
matics as a . . __^- m • Z. 

means to the opportunity to account. When a sunicient 

varying ap- variety of applications are found in familiar 

perception, experience, the limit to the use of mathematics 

as a means to varying apperception lies in introducing new 



CULTURE DISCIPLINE AND DEMOCRACY 119 

terms and concepts that add to the difficulty of the work, 
by either unnecessarily anticipating experience which will in 
due course of time become familiar, or trespassing upon the 
domain of specialization. Carried to this point, the ''new 
arithmetic" is not arithmetic at all. If the only usefulness of 
mathematics lay in its contribution to varying apperception, 
it would not be necessary to include it in the general course 
of study. 

7. Varying Apperception Furthered by the Presentation of the 
Most Many-sided and Recurring Relationships Wher- 
ever Found 

On the other hand, literature, history, sociology, economics, 
the natural sciences, and all other subjects rich in concrete 
subject matter, with an abundance of relationships not made 
certain through specific discipline, both furnish continual 
material for varying apperception and demand its develop- 
ment. While even the seemingly most useless associations 
that experience brings about should be welcomed in so far 
as they are not antagonistic to the educational aim, it is the 
function of instruction to further a useful varying appercep- 
tion by presenting for incidental association ideas most 
many-sided and frequently recurring. This means select- 
tion from all phases of human experience and branches of 
knowledge whether real or abstract, on precisely the same 
principles as in the valuation of material from the stand- 
point of direct preparation. In the case of indirect prepara- 
tion, however, many-sidedness is in itself useful regardless of 
whether the relationships in question are known to further 
the educational aim or not. If they are known directly to 
further it, many-sidedness and frequency make furtherance 
exceedingly'probable. Hence, from the standpoint of varying 
apperception, the potential usefulness of all directly useful 
material is measured by many-sidedness and frequency. If 
they are not known directly to further the aim, the possibility 
of furtherance as well as its extent are measured in the same 
way. 



I20 CULTURE DISCIPLINE AND DEMOCRACY 

8. Material Organized for Direct Furtherance Most Useful 

to Varying Apperception, Because it is Composed of the 
Most Many-sided and Frequently Recurring Relation- 
ships from all Branches 

However, material organized for the direct furtherance of 
the aim, both in its furnishing of material for varying apper- 
ception and in the necessity for its furtherance of it, possesses 
great advantages not only over the abstract subject, but over 
those branches organized from the academic viewpoint alone. 
Over the abstract subjects, because it must involve the pre- 
sentation of a vast amount of potentially useful material 
which cannot be certainly memorized, and because its rela- 
tionships which are made certain depend for their highest 
usefulness upon their var3dng apperception of and through 
what is thus potentially useful. Over even the academic 
subjects most rich in content, because both its potentially 
useful material, and that which is made certainly useful, 
must be the most many-sided and frequently recurring that 
all branches of knowledge and phases of experience can 
afford. Finally, it must not be forgotten that even in special- 
ization, the usefulness of an academic subject in the further- 
ance of varying apperception and in utilizing varying apper- 
ception for the furtherance of its special aim depends upon the 
many-sidedness and frequency of recurrence of the material 
presented to the learner. 

9. Recapitulation of the Advantages of Direct Preparation 

Over the Formal Branches in the Furtherance of General 
Discipline 

From the standpoint of general discipline, the advantages 
of direct preparation over the formal subjects have already 
been demonstrated. Every advantage it possesses for cumu- 
lative impression, mere remembrance, and varying apper- 
ception ensures a condition advantageous to general disci- 
pline. Direct preparation compels continuity of habit. 
The abstract or academic subject which does not become a 



CULTURE DISCIPLINE AND DEMOCRACY 12 1 

part of either direct preparation or specialization is soon for- 
gotten. 

Direct preparation compels a highly complex system which 
is itself a part of life. The pure science and abstract subject 
are inherently remote from life, and the formal discipline is 
at times selected on account of its extreme remoteness. Yet 
the usefulness of the academic subject to a general discipline 
that is not confined to its own subject matter is wholly 
dependent upon many-sided relationship to life. 

The general application in life of habits having useful 
general stimuli is essential to direct preparation. For the 
academic subject and especially for the formal subject general 
application outside its own subject matter is wholly unneces- 
sary. The very method inherent in the formal subject, while 
compelling specific discipline, is hostile to general discipUne. 
In direct preparation all habits that are made certain are 
generally useful in life outside the school, and can be so taught 
that their stimuli are just general enough to be useful. In 
the formal subjects, in order to master the habits that are 
generally useful, far more that is only specifically useful 
must be just as certainly made habitual, while the stimuli 
to the generally useful habits cannot be limited except through 
the certain association with them of particular fields of ap- 
plication. 

Finally, useful general discipline through the formal sub- 
ject is found to be absolutely dependent upon both specifically 
associated knowledge outside the formal subject matter and 
upon habits of analysis and synthesis in specific fields or in 
response to specific stimuli, which, after all, must be devel- 
oped through direct preparation. 

Even the single advantage for specific discipline which 
remoteness from life gives to abstract subjects or pure science 
involves a disadvantage which far more than counterbalances 
it. It is true that the subject matter of branches whose 
content is concrete or directly useful, on account of its con- 
creteness tends to be more firmly associated in the minds of 
the students through individual and varying apperception 



122 CULTURE DISCIPLINE AND DEMOCRACY 

than through the relationships most specifically useful or 

those essential to general discipline. Although this may mean 

more immediate distraction than while abstract relationships 

are being formed, it also means that the ordinary operation 

of individual apperception is far less likely to call abstract 

relationships to mind. Number symbols and formula apply 

to units, not to things, and are too universal 

many-sided- either for things to call them to mind or for them 

nessmay in themselves to constitute a suggestive and ap- 

atteSion perceiving mass for e very-day experience. But 

during the if general sequences and groups high in their 

mastery of relative usefulness are, in spite of the constant 

it finally * Struggle against purely individual apperception, 

makes once certainly and persistently formed, they ever 

them dom- continue to serve as a means not only to the 
mant. . . . , . , , . , . 

apperception oi new material m the relationships 

in which it will be most directly and certainly useful, but 
continually recalling individually apperceived material and 
bemg recalled by it, they act as a persistent reorganizing 
force and cumulatively increase the usefulness of the whole 
mental content. Even if this reorganization were as pos- 
sible in the case of the formal subject, it would not be as 
useful. The counteraction of individual and varying ap- 
perception, in itself so useful, must, therefore, be met by a 
more systematic and determined effort firmly to memorize 
and retain the general groups and sequences most essential 
to a useful general discipline. They, and not individual 
apperception, must, through continual, unvarying, and, 
hence, mechanical repetition, come to dominate. 

lo. General Conclusions Concerning the Course of Study 

In short, from the broader standpoint of formal self- 

activity, including general discipline, the traditionally "formal 

subjects," formal through a formal discipline 

propositions which the "faculty psychology" fully justified, 

are not only not exclusively formal, but lack the 

educational or formal certainty and potentiality of direct 



CULTURE DISCIPLINE AND DEMOCRACY 1 23 

preparation. As regards the course of study, four momen- 
tous and more or less revolutionary conclusions are ap- 
parent: First, no subjects, especially no abstract or formal 
subjects, such as the languages and mathematics, can be 
required as wholes on disciplinary grounds alone. Second, 
the curriculum "required" in common of all should include 
only those subjects as wholes or parts of subjects, that are 
directly useful to all individuals who are not specialists, or 
that, like the mother tongue and basal geographical and his- 
torical associations yet to be discussed, are indirectly useful 
in the highest degree through the many-sidedness and fre- 
quency of recurrence of their subject matter in every-day life. 
This does not mean that each individual may not also be re- 
quired to take some specialty, but rather that all individuals 
shall not be compelled to take the same specialty on formal 
grounds alone. Third, to form the content of this required 
curriculum, selection of relationships must be made from the 
whole range of human knowledge and experience on the basis 
of the degree of sensation or feeling and the relative many- 
sidedness and frequency of recurrence through which they 
directly and indirectly further the educational aim. Fourth, 
the resulting subject matter must be organized and taught 
with a view both to the direct furtherance of the aim through 
a highly systematic specific discipline and cumulative impres- 
sion, and its indirect furtherance through both it and the 
remaining forms of self-activity— that is, mere remembrance, 
varying apperception, and general discipline. 

II. The Greater Part of Mathematics, Exclusive of Arithmetic, 
Must he Eliminated from the Required General Course 
To sum up the effect of all this upon the curriculum as at 
present organized — mathematics, with the exception of 
limited parts of its elementary branches, is handed -p^^Yiahmtv 
over to the specialist. In elementary arith- of a broader 
metic, indeed, the process of elimination is already elementary 
almost accomplished, if it has not here and there ^^^^l^ 
been carried too far to ensure ready and com- matics. 



124 CULTURE DISCIPLINE AND DEMOCRACY 

plete mastery of its directly useful principles. When old 
Thomas Hill of Harvard, the forerunner of elective sys- 
tems, though the first text-book maker to popularize originals 
in geometry, insisted that the study of higher mathematics 
should be ^'only for those of mathematical ability,"^^ he had 
in mind a far broader course in mathematics for the element- 
ary school. Perhaps the selection of the mathematics 
directly useful to all, in so far as such selection is possible 
from an exact science, will ultimately realize his ideal. 
Although algebra and geometry as systematic wholes will 
no longer be required, it is essential that the required ele- 
mentary course shall include enough algebraic and geomet- 
rical subject matter to develop mathematical interest and 
to determine individual fitness for mathematical specializa- 
tion. 

For the sake of continuity, the study oi mathematics, in- 
cluding that of generally useful phases of arithmetic, should 
be distributed at weekly or semiweekly intervals throughout 
the entire high school course. For the additional reason that 
failure to develop mathematical interest or ability in the high 
school may in the case of some individuals be overcome by 
different instructors, changed methods of instruction, and 
other conditions, it should be continued for the first half year 
in the college. But mathematics as a required study should 
no longer include material useful only to the specialist, should 
no longer be concentrated into one or two years of the high 
school course and then forgotten until it is partly revived in 
the college, should no longer consume the whole of a hopeless 
college year for those not interested in it or who are not com- 
pelled to become so through the demands of a chosen spe- 
cialty, and, above all, should no longer involve the absurd 
and harmful requirement that a year of mathematical failure 
shall be compensated for by the repetition of the same course 
until failure is transformed to success. The moral training in- 
volved in voluntary persistence in the face of mathematical 
failure is invaluable to those students who must master 
mathematics to succeed in some specialty which involves it. 



CULTURE DISCIPLINE AND DEMOCRACY 125 

In the case of others, it is robbed of all incentive, drives them 
into moral and intellectual apathy or rebellion, and with 
similar insistence on the mastery of a particular language, is 
one of the chief causes of students dropping out of college, or 
of their failure to gain the interest in alternative subjects 
that will urge them on to independent achievement. It is in 
regret over such wasted opportunity in his own early years at 
Oxford that Mr. R. H. Quick quotes the following passage 
from Henry IV: '^I beseech you heartily, scurvy, lousy knave, 
at my desires, and my requests, and my petitions, to eat, 
look you, this leek: because, look you, you do not love it, nor 
your affections, nor your appetities, and your digestions, does 
not agree with it, I would desire you to eat it." 

If these conclusions appear radical and antagonistic to 
prevalent opinion, it should be remembered that they are 
conclusions whose disproval is possible through demonstra- 
tion of the fallacy of the cumulative propositions on which 
they have been based. It should also be held in mind that 
they apply to only a limited portion of the student body. 

Because all students of the sciences in their most advanced 
stages, and of the various branches of engineering and other 
professions require thorough knowledge of the ^(j^^nced 
higher mathematics, and even because a multi- algebra and 
tude of mathematical instructors are in conse- geometry 
quence required, a very large proportion of the ^^n result 
whole mass of students will specialize in mat he- in more 
matics. The science of mathematics will lose t^io/o^s^ 
nothing from the fact that students not inter- 
ested in it and w^ho do not need it as a part of their direct 
preparation for life are eliminated from mathematical classes. 
On the contrary, with smaller and more earnest classes on the 
one hand, and greater continuity through academic and pro- 
fessional specialization on the other, the mathematical work 
of the college and university should become more efficient. 
At present this favorable condition can be brought about, and 
is in part brought about, only by driving men not adapted to 
mathematical study out of college. It is better, after all, to 



126 CULTURE DISCIPLINE AND DEMOCRACY 

attain it by permitting them to gain their general discipline 
in some other way. The magnificent specific discipline 
inherent in the mathematical subject matter has not been 
questioned. It will be more certain and complete, however, 
and self-activity within the specialty from the solution of 
originals in geometry to research in the newest and most 
abstruse phases of the science be the better assured, if the 
conditions already discussed as favorable to general discipline 
are brought about through pedagogical method within the 
mathematical field itself. Beyond that, mathematics does 
not require discipline to go, though in part it can and, in 
varying degree with individuals, it will. 

12. Although One or More Foreign Languages Are Useful to 
Most Students, They Should he Required Only of Those 
to Whose Specialization They Are Essential 

Much the same can be said of the foreign languages, as 
distinct from foreign literatures. Greek has already been 
handed over to the specialist — to the specialist in culture as 
well as in theology, philosophy, and philology. Probably 
a carefully limited amount of Latin etymology will be found 
to be of high usefulness in the mastery of the meanings of 
English words and especially in their spelling. That is, 
in place of the usual effort at exhaustive lists of Latin deriva- 
tives, all examples that mislead from either the standpoint 
of meaning or of spelling must be omitted. Outside of this, 
and indeed in most cases including this, Latin has also become 
a phase of specialization, except in institutions which can af- 
ford to offer but one or two languages, and must require them 
of all, because alternative courses cannot be given. Par- 
ticular modern languages have never been required except as 
involved in some phase of specialization. At least two lan- 
guages, ancient or modern, however, are still generally re- 
quired for college entrance and as a condition to graduation. 
It is this requirement that in the small high schools and col- 
leges still forces a particular language upon all students. 



CULTURE DISCIPLINE AND DEMOCRACY 127 

That is, the fault is directly economic and only indirectly 
pedagogic. The New York High School Teachers' Com- 
mittee has raised the question as to whether but one required 
language cannot be substituted for two.^^ Wood- 
row Wilson would substitute more. In the light one foreign 
of the preceding discussion the answer is plain, language 

Since it is an incontrovertible fact that both direct should be 

required, 
preparation for life and the adequate develop- most stud- 

ment of every formal phase of self-activity are ents should 
possible without the study of any foreign language, ™^more?^^ 
neither one nor more, but no foreign language 
should be required except in so far as it is involved in such parts 
of etymology as are helpful to the mastery of the vernacular 
itself. It is true that the concrete indication of grammatical 
distinctions through an inflected language might, as Alexan- 
der Bain has pointed out, make the transition from Greek 
or Latin to English an instance of proceeding from the sub- 
jectively simple to the complex. But where the essentials 
of English grammar have been mastered before the study of 
the foreign language is begun, this advantage becomes im- 
possible or reduces itself to a review and concrete re-enforce- 
ment of distinctions but partially mastered that should and 
could have been thoroughly mastered. That translation in 
general and Latin etymology in particular aid in the mastery 
of the English language, and should be made so to aid far 
more effectively where specialization demands the foreign 
tongue, is a readily apparent fact. But no unprejudiced 
thinker will seriously contend that the years of study neces- 
sary to free translation are economically spent by an indi- 
vidual who does not need the foreign language either as a 
means to specialized study or experience, as a relatively 
effective mode of developing formal self-activity, or as a 
special instrument to culture, many-sided knowledge, and 
experience. Neither a branch of the higher mathematics 
nor a foreign language should be uniformly required of all 
who enter college or who seek a general as distinct from a 
specialized college education. 



128 CULTURE DISCIPLINE AND DEMOCRACY 

Dr. Wilson's argument for more foreign languages rather 
than less as a requirement for college entrance,' being based 
upon the greater relative readiness with which the languages 
are mastered by children, and, as he might have added, the 
continuity of instruction made possible by their early study, 
applies only on the assumption that the languages are essen- 
tial to all and that the more of them that are mastered the 
better. That is, he assumes what his argument is meant to 
prove. So far as many individuals are concerned, he is un- 
doubtedly right, but there is a multitude of college graduates 
who never fully mastered the languages which were required 
of them or never put them to use outside the college 
walls. 

If, from the standpoint of specialization, the majority of 
individuals will continue to elect or be compelled to take the 
higher mathematics, a far greater majority will continue to 
pursue the study of one or more languages, owing to their 
wider usefulness and the greater number of specialties likely 
to require them. As already pointed out, aptness for linguis- 
tic study and the pleasure derived from it, love of some 
Limited special field of culture, advanced scientific re- 
attendance search, foreign business or foreign travel, even 
in language ^j^g demands of certain forms of social life, unite 

Cld.SS6S Will 

result in to make the omission of language study more or 
more effi- less exceptional. Indeed, there is a certain social 
cient wor .^ tendency toward the study of what almost all 
educated people study. The abolition of the higher mathe- 
matics as a required subject in general education, by in- 
creasing the time available in high school and college for other 
study, will tend in the same direction. Moreover, as in the 
case of mathematics, the elimination from language classes 
of all individuals who neither through natural fitness or the 
demand of specialization are interested in language study will 
increase the thoroughness and the continuity of instruction. 
So long as even the exceptional individual can be broadly 
cultured, effectively disciplined in the more inclusive sense of 
formal self-activity, and directly and effectively prepared for 



CULTURE DISCIPLINE AND DEMOCRACY 129 

moral and healthful living, social service, good citizenship, 
and his individual vocation and avocation without the study 
of a foreign language, the study of a foreign language should 
not be compelled either for entrance to a general college course 
or its completion. 

From the standpoint of general discipline within either a 
particular foreign language or the whole domain of linguistic 
study, a discipline of which the carrying over of grammatical 
and rhetorical habits from a foreign language to the vernacu- 
lar is a part, pedagogical inquiry must, as in the case of 
mathematics, more seriously concern itself with the study of 
the conditions favorable to application. A highly Qgneral 
important first step has already been taken discipline 
through the discussion which preceded and fol- within the 
lowed the appointment in 191 1 of the joint com- dgp^den^t 
mittee on grammatical nomenclature by the on pedago- 
National Educational Association, the Modern ^ic condi- 
Language Association of America, and the Ameri- 
can Philological Association. Professor Hale has admirably 
indicated the desirability of a terminology general enough to 
unify language study and to make more readily possible the 
carrying over of combinations and judgments from one lan- 
guage to another.^ Professor Kuersteiner has pointed out the 
fact that a less general terminology may be more readily 
understood and applied by school children in the mastery of 
one or two foreign languages.^^ Dr. Rounds has been a 
national leader in the effort to agree upon a common termi- 
nology for all English grammars and language books.^^ The 
bearing of this movement upon ready identification of the 
general stimuli involved in application of grammatical dis- 
tinctions, and, therefore, upon general discipline within the 
field of language, is highly important, while the analytic 
nature of the discussion which characterized the recent Sym- 
posium on language teaching held under the auspices of the 
Michigan Schoolmasters' Club is prophetic of a valuable 
contribution by the national committee. 



130 CULTURE DISCIPLINE AND DEMOCRACY 

13. Bearing of the Analysis of Formal Self -activity Upon the 
Place of the Natural Sciences in the General Course of 
Study 

The effect upon the natural sciences of the conclusions 
reached from the analysis of formal self-activity is less revo- 
lutionary. Although most colleges have been including in 
their required course of study at least chemistry and physics, 
the movement has already begun toward requiring an equal 
or a greater amount of work in one or two sciences elected 
from the whole group, rather than the customary amount of 
work in one or two specified sciences. For example, it has 
been proposed to substitute for, say, two required units of work 
in physics and chemistry respectively, three units of work 
in each of any two of the natural sciences. The domi- 
nance of experimental method in all the natural sciences 
vitiates the objection which might have been urged against 
this on the ground of Bain's distinction between the disciplin- 
ary value of the experimental sciences and of sciences of classi- 
fication. As against requiring any pure sciences as wholes, 
however, much the same arguments apply as in the case of 
the languages. Since the entire system of knowledge and 
activities belonging to any one of the sciences is non-essential 
to many-sidedness and culture, the requirement of one or two 
sciences as systematic wholes is obviously based upon disci- 
plinary grounds alone. And on that ground it would be jus- 
tified, if the useful training in adaptation as distinct from ap- 
plication involved in experimental work were peculiar to the 

. , natural sciences alone. While scientific method 
A Dd,rtid.l • 

study of ^^ ^^^ thxis, peculiar to a naturalistic and objective 

science ade- subject matter, the necessity of selected parts of 

quate for natural sciences to direct preparation for life 
formation . .,. . . . „, 

of the habits niakes it. possible to utilize its training. The 

peculiar to new movement is wrong in compelling selection 
tat?on°^^^' ^^^^ among the natural sciences as wholes. 
Selection must be made from within them. Per- 
haps all the natural science that is most essential to life in 



CULTURE DISCIPLINE AND DEMOCRACY 131 

general, both in its many-sidedness and frequency of recur- 
rence, can be taught in and below the high school. The so- 
called courses in ''general" or "elementary" science that have 
recently been successfully introduced into the high schools of 
Pittsburgh and elsewhere are planned from this point of view. 
The old physical geography courses were equally composite 
without ensuring the same many-sided relation to every-day 
life. More than this, the general science is experimental and 
disciplinary in place of being merely informational. Through 
laboratory work the pupils are both directly prepared for life 
and given invaluable sense training and a form of mental and 
manual development which, while involved in other phases of 
direct preparation for life, is thus strongly supplemented and 
re-enforced. Thomas Hill believed that enough of this sort 
of instruction can be given in the elementary and high schools 
to leave natural science in the college and university entirely 
to the specialist.^^ Both the abundance of naturalistic sub- 
ject matter and the desirability of continuity in the material 
of instruction make it probable that he is wrong. If he is, it 
is likely that when the test of comparative worth, both from 
the standpoint of direct preparation and of formal 
development, is pedagogically applied, it will be course ^^^ 
found that a similar selection of more advanced should in- 
subject matter than is within the ready compre- ^^^^^ ^ , 
. . . variety of 

hension of the ordinary high school pupil, to material 

which, however, the general science of the high taken from 

school has been preparatory, will be far more * f severa 
IT f J ■> ^ sciences. 

useful than the study of one or two pure sciences 
as wholes. In any event, the proposed status of natural 
science in the college is inconsistent. If students are per- 
mitted to elect any two natural sciences to meet the require- 
ment, why, from the disciplinary point of view, not one in 
place of two? Except from the standpoint of direct prepara- 
tion or specialization, one taught through a longer term of 
years than is probable with two, will ensure a more certain 
specific discipline. In any event, the likelihood of the general 
application of the resulting habits is in proportion to the 



132 CULTURE DISCIPLINE AND DEMOCRACY 

extent to which a subject matter naturally allied to every-day 
life is still more many-sidedly connected with it through 
instruction. 

14. Increased Contribution to Required Subject Matter from 

the Subjects Rich in Humanistic Content 
Perhaps the most dramatic result of analytic investigation 
of formal self-activity is the reversal of the relative place in 
the curriculum held by literature, history, sociology, civics, 
and economics as compared with mathematics and the 
languages. The latter become electives; it is highly prob- 
able that when the proposed test of comparative worth is 
applied, the former will each furnish so large a portion of the 
required subject matter as to become required subjects. 
Each of these subjects is so broad in its content that the col- 
lege course, after either furnishing or taking for granted its 
general organization, necessarily selects here and there spe- 
cialized phases. Direct preparation demands that whether 
this specialization is of period or of topic, it shall include all 
directly useful details that are essential, in the relationships 
and the form which most certainly and most potently further 
right living, good health, general industrial efficiency, social 
service, and good citizenship as well as avocation. Selection 
which disregards this for a vain effort at exhaustive represen- 
tation and organization, passes into the territory of academic, 
scientific, or vocational specialization. 

15. The Use of Selected Portions of Academic Branches No 

Menace to Discipline 

At first thought the academic specialist sees in the partial 
use of his subject matter on the basis of its direct usefulness 
nothing less than the destruction of its system and the loss 
of the resulting discipline. His aim is completeness, both in 
inclusiveness of subject matter and in degree of organization. 
To be sure, under the influence of culture-epoch, biology, and 
genetic psychology he has attempted to adapt his elementary 
text-books to the pupils of the age for which they are intended. 



CULTURE DISCIPLINE AND DEMOCRACY 133 

but his aim has never ceased to be as complete a treatment as 
is within the comprehension of the pupils and as the time he 
can secure in the course of study permits. His attitude of 
mind is that of the pure scientist, not that of the teacher. 
Completeness is essential to the advancement of science 
through the specialist, and to the spiritual inheritance which 
each generation must pass on to the next. It is not essential 
to instruction, either through direct preparation ^^^^ ^^^ ^j 
or the resulting phases of formal self-activity. It the special- 
is, however, mainly from this latter viewpoint ^^* * *^°^' 
that the specialist has sought to so far as possible often hostile 
present his subject as a logical and scientific to interest 
whole. It must contain as many details as adap- p^^g^^^"' 
tation permits, but, above all, they must be so 
selected as to secure the completeness of organization which 
has been assumed to be necessary to discipline. That is, 
even in the exact sciences there has been partial presentation 
of the branches. But however bare of illustrative material 
and the material essential to adequate application the text- 
book may be, it must cover the entire range of the specialty 
and present it as an entire though abstract and attenuated 
whole. 

The result has been adiTiittedly unsatisfactory, especially 
from the disciplinary point of view. Pupils are not thorough 

in mathematics or the languages. Thev are not ^, 

1 • 1 • 11- rr^i 1 The remedy, 

mterested m history and literature. The remedy selection 

is obviously concentration, but why on one or within the 
two branches as wholes? It is possible at the branches, 
expense of many-sidedness to require sufficient 
time in the school course for the complete mastery of arith- 
metic, algebra, and geometry, and two languages for every 
pupil who under that inexorable condition will continue in 
school. The procrustean classical course, against which such 
lovers of the classics as Sydney Smith^"^ and Thomas Arnold 
revolted, accomplished this. But the result is at best a 
highly limited specific discipline for the survivors, hostile 
not only to many-sidedness, but to both the direct preparation 



134 CULTURE DISCIPLINE AND DEMOCRACY 

and the general discipline to which it is an equally favorable 
condition. The alternative is concentration within the 
branch through a still more partial selection from its subject 
matter. This, obviously desirable from the standpoint of 
specific discipline, in so far as specific discipline is not de- 
pendent upon the mastery of the organization of the branch as 
a whole, makes possible the selection of the parts most cer- 
tainly and specifically useful from the standpoint of direct 
preparation, furthers many-sidedness and general discipline, 
and even renders judicious specialization more probable by 
making the first step taken in every field practical, interest- 
ing, and sure. 

1 6. The Partial Subject Matter Selected Can Usually Be Organ- 
ized from the Standpoint of the Academic Subject, as Well 
as from that of Direct Preparation 

And even specific discipline is not dependent upon the 
mastery of the branches as wholes. Selection from the 
standpoint of direct preparation will ensure in many respects 
a different content for certain of the branches, but unless a 
subject is almost wholly lacking in what directly prepares 
for life, the subject matter can be organized from the stand- 
point of the specialty as well as from the standpoint of direct 
preparation. Indeed, in most cases the organization peculiar 
to the special branch not only is as possible through its directly 
useful parts as through the specialty as a whole, but is as 
essential to direct preparation as to formal self-activity. 
Judged by the many-sidedness and frequency of recurrence 
which have already been seen to be the basis for selection, 
the general sequences of ideas and actions in time and space 
characteristic of general history, geography, and literature 
will be found to be indispensable, while the selection of directly 
useful details results both in the topical study of citizenship, 
industry, and morals throughout all times, lands, and litera- 
tures, as well as throughout the more intensive treatments of 
particular periods, countries, or writers in which such details 
may exceptionally abound. 



CULTURE DISCIPLINE AND DEMOCRACY 135 

On the other hand, it is easy to demonstrate that the thor- 
ough mastery of a part of arithmetic or geometry, or of se- 
lected facts and principles from a group of sciences, can be 
made specifically disciplinary from the standpoint of the 
specialty. One set of experiments will serve as well as an- 
other to develop the habits essential in scientific investiga- 
tion. The arithmetical discipline which, as Professor Schwatt 
urged, can be as well developed through a more complete 
study of number as through higher mathematics,^*^ can be even 
better developed through the complete mastery of selected 
arithmetical operations or practical operations selected from 
the whole range of number. The foreign languages alone, 
since their peculiar usefulness is instrumental, cannot be 
usefully taught in part except from the standpoint of ety- 
mology. Incidentally, however, it is interesting to call to 
mind even here Thomas Hill's final argument for the teaching 
of the languages from a disciplinary point of view: ''But the 
most valuable part of the study of words does not consist in 
acquiring that intimate familiarity with any one foreign 
language which will enable one to write or speak it, nor does 
it consist solely in the intellectual exercise of learning to read 
it, and the intellectual vigor thereby produced. It consists 
rather in rising, by the study of particular examples, to a 
perception of some general laws of thought and laws of ar- 
ticulation," for the attainment of which, "a moderate ac- 
quaintance with four or five languages is better than a thor- 
ough acquaintance with one or two." 

In concluding this brief review of the probable consequences 
of readjustment, if, in the spirit of the old Athenian, we fol- 
low the argument whithersoever it may lead, two funda- 
mental and controlling facts must be held in mind. The 
first is, that direct preparation for lif e m general itself demands 
as adequate specific discipline as can be made possible by 
concentration upon any of the old "formal" subjects; and 
the second, that direct instruction prepares the way for and 
at every point strengthens the specialization which should 
parallel it throughout the entire course of education. 



CHAPTER V 

THE INTERDEPENDENCE OF CULTURE AND DIRECT PREPA- 
RATION FOR LIFE 

But however convincingly analysis may demonstrate the 
indispensability of direct preparation for life to formal self- 
activity, it is when it is brought to bear upon the relation- 
ship of both direct preparation and formal self-activity to 
culture that the result seems most radical. It is especially 
important for some of us to discern that what is commonly 
called culture is not a distinct form of self -activity, as assumed 
by W. H. Payne and others, but rather an attitude of mind 
or apperceptive state far more largely dependent upon im- 
pression than upon discipline. This is especially true of the 
traditional culture, something which to be a gentleman one 
must at least have forgotten and which one is likely to forget 
because it is based upon knowledge unrelated to every-day 
life. The fact that it is so unrelated, that its concepts and 
activities are not more or less definitely associated with what 
is most certain to recur in ordinary experience, tends to re- 
move it from the domain of discipline to that of remembrance 
and impression, from the domain of the specific to that of the 
vague, the intangible and the relatively useless — not utterly 
useless because it is vague and intangible, but relatively use- 
less because it is not related to life. It is in protest against 
such a culture that Emerson exclaims: "Poetry and prudence 
should be coincident. Poets should be law-givers, that is, 
the boldest lyric inspiration should not elude and insult, 
but should announce and lead the civil code and the day*s 
work." 

136 



CULTURE DISCIPLINE AND DEMOCRACY 137 

I. Culture Itself a Partial Phase of Direct Preparation for 

Life 

Indeed, culture is itself a phase of preparation for life, but 
a phase from which old Greek tradition has tended to exclude 
the worker. Historically considered, it is not only prepara- 
tion for a leisure which the mass of workers cannot share, but 
through a kind of education which the mass of workers can- 
not hope to attain. It has not been partial preparation for 
leisure regarded merely as a part of life, but for a life of leis- 
ure. It is this that led Benjamin Rush, when he came to 
believe that ''the business of education has acquired a new 
complexion by the independence of our country, "^^ to argue 
against the study of Latin and Greek as unsuited to democ- 
racy, not that it failed to provide examples of illustrious citi- 
zenship, but that it set aside those who mastered it as an 
educated class too often made arrogant through a peculiar 
learning.^^ Today when democracy is triumphant, when 
leisure is pla3ring a constantly increasing part in the life of the 
mass, when a far more many-sided learning is accessible 
through the vernacular than inspired the Renaissance through 
the Latin and Greek, it is high time to analyze culture into 
its essential conditions and factors in order to discover what 
part of it, if any, is involved in other phases of direct prepara- 
tion for life, and to what extent, if to any, preparation for 
other phases of life is antagonistic to it. 

2. The Essential Factors in Culture 

In the first place, while culture is liberal in the sense of 
being distinct from work, it does not of necessity include all 
knowledge that is not vocational. Pure science is distinct 
from science applied in work and may constitute a part of 
culture, but the specialist in pure science is not necessarily 
a man of culture, and a man of culture does not necessarily 
possess an intensive knowledge of pure science. The sub- 
ect matter of culture must be liberal, but, except that it must 



138 CULTURE DISCIPLINE AND DEMOCRACY 

include what is essential to the development of aesthetic 
appreciation, the only additional requirements are that it 
must be many-sided and that it must be the common posses- 
sion either of the whole educated leisure class or of a social 
group within it. It is both from the standpoint of many- 
sidedness and the use of culture in social intercourse that the 
specialist in pure science may fail to be a man of culture. 
In fact, an unrestricted elective system with its subjective 
specialization, and the group elective with its specialization, 
whether academic or vocational, are equally hostile to cul- 
ture if instead of paralleling a liberal content required in com- 
mon of all, they are permitted to take its place. With all of 
their many-sidedness, the pedant with the knowledge that he 
fails to put to use, the man of science absorbed in the advance- 
ment of learning, and the worker learned in all that contrib- 
utes to his specialty, may still lack the essential elements of 
culture. The many-sidedness must not mean mere informa- 
tion or applied knowledge, but many-sided social contact 
through a common knowledge and a common intellectual and 
emotional experience in which the aesthetic plays conspicuous 
part. So necessary to it is this social quality, that culture 
must include the poHteness and civility which are the outward 
expression of the understanding and the sympathy in taste 
and in thought which many-sidedness of knowledge makes 
possible but does not ensure. It would be possible even to 
conceive of a Bernard Shaw possessing the form of culture, 
but lacking its spirit, a superman, contemptuous of his fellows 
becausethe knowledge and experience which should make him 
comprehend and love humanity have only made him a man 
apart. The Philistine may know what the man of culture 
knows, but he does not appreciate what he appreciates or love 
what he loves. 

3. Modern Culture So Extensive as to Make Necessary Selec- 
tion and Specialization in Culture Itself 
At the beginning of the Renaissance, many-sidedness was 
impossible without knowledge of the Greek and the Latin 



CULTURE DISCIPLINE AND DEMOCRACY 139 

tongues. They not only contained what was Culture 
universal in thought, but expressed and inspired ^^^ ^^y 
what was universal in literature and art. The through 
early humanists were a noble but arrogant band ?^5^^ ^?J 
— an intellectual aristocracy. The fact that the leisure con- 
masses were debarred from their intellectual fined to the 
fellowship because the vernacular was unfitted ®^* 
for scholarly use did not trouble their minds. "The cus- 
tom or convenience of ten thousand hinds," argues Flori- 
das, ''is not to be weighed against those of a single man of 
learning. "^^ Sir Thomas More alone, Christian as well as 
humanist, dared to dream of a Utopia where all men should 
have leisure to live according to the direction of reason and 
where reading was made the chief avocation of the masses 
because they had "all their learning in their own tongue which 
is both a copious and a pleasant language in which a man can 
fully express his mind."^^ Gradually the vernaculars of 
modern Europe not only were made "copious and pleasant," 
but came to have noble literatures of their own, and to in- 
clude through translation what is best not only in the Latin 
and the Greek, but in any other tongue which has become the 
medium of culture. 

By the beginning of the nineteenth century, with its mar- 
vellous expansion of the boundaries of human knowledge, its 
exploration and travel, scientific discovery, industrial in- 
ventions, commercial development, political revolution and 
social reform, culture could not only be found outside the 
ancient languages, but could not fully be found within them. 
More than this, the humanistic content has become too broad 
for all educated men to possess it in common. Hence the 
elective system within a liberal education, the study of 
branches in part, and academic specialization which may 
either be a part of culture or hostile to it. That is, it has 
become possible to specialize in culture as in discipline or 
vocation. 

In a succession of simpler civilizations the culture of one 
age or epoch has given way to that of the next. In complex 



I40 CULTURE DISCIPLINE AND DEMOCRACY 

Culture now modern civilization various cults exist side by 
to permit ^^^^ — ^^^ classical, the literary, the artistic, and 
specializa- even the Browning, Shakesperian, or Wagnerian, 
tion within ^he new Amherst and Dean West's Graduate 
School would represent specialization in culture 
as certainly as Massachusetts' School of Agriculture or 
Boston School of Technology represents specialization in 
vocation. 

4. Specialization in Culture Must he Preceded by a Culture 

Common to All Educated Individuals 
However, just as specialization from the standpoint of 
discipline or vocation must be paralleled and preceded by 
direct preparation for life in general, so specialization in cul- 
ture must be preceded by a culture which is common to all 
cults. The thorough man of culture must be a lover of the 
beautiful in all of its general forms. He must possess a cul- 
tivated and discriminating taste for literature, music, paint- 
ing, sculpture, architecture. He must enjoy aesthetically and 
ethically as well as physically what is beautiful in nature — 
"the flower in the crannied wall" or the sunrise in the Alps. 
He must love learning for the sake of learning as well as for 
its direct usefulness to man. He must appreciate each aes- 
thetic and intellectual field, but in some form or other, rather 
than in all forms or the same forms. Some will enjoy one 
novelist and not another; others, essays or poetry rather than 
fiction; some, oratorios; some, grand operas; others, ballads 
or symphonies. But all must acquire as common an aesthetic 
appreciation of every form of art and all that is great in mind 
or beautiful in nature as innate tendencies permit. 

5. Culture Must Not Antagonize, but Further Other Phases of 

the Educational Aim 

Neither this common and required culture nor the culture 

that is specialized should contain anything hostile to the 

"half truths of service." On the contrary, what makes for 

the right enjoyment of leisure is subordinate to what makes 



CULTURE DISCIPLINE AND DEMOCRACY 141 

for healthful and ethical living, and should further industrial 

efi&ciency, good citizenship, and social service. Aristophanes 

and his fellow Athenians were right in struggling against the 

philosophy of Socrates and of Plato, which led the young 

Greek to exclaim with Alcibiades, ''He makes me confess 

that I ought not to live as I do, neglecting the wants of my 

own soul, and busying myself with the concerns of the 

Athenians." While all can readily agree with Dean Riley, 

of Bryu Mawr, when she insists that on the whole the liberal 

education of today tends in the direction of good 

citizenship, Justice Hughes, in his Yale address, j^^g^ ^^ 

shows clearly the need of direct training for related to 

civic service ; while Mr. Roosevelt sees, even in the citizenship, 

, . , ' . . , ' . , vocation, 

classical reaction at Amherst, an exceptional and all other 

opportunity to teach political ideals.^^ It is phases of 
not enough to say that everything hostile to pj^p^ation. 
citizenship shall be omitted from modern cul- 
ture; in the selection of its subject matter all that directly 
makes for citizenship in any high degree must be included. 
It is none the less cultural because its emotional form makes 
it potent for good. 

From this point of view, however, the greatest wrong done 
modern education by the domination of its culture by ancient 
ideals has been through the assumption that ideas and ac- 
tivities related to vocation are rendered illiberal if they are 
also associated with work. To the traditional thinker voca- 
tional culture is inconceivable. Culture must not only pre- 
pare for leisure, but must be disassociated with work. While 
many phases of culture have no connection with work at all, 
wherever such connection can be established, avocation, the 
calling of the mind away from every-day routine, is most 
readily brought about. The more certainly and permanently 
a thousand lines of interest and points of contact relate cul- 
ture to life in general or even put otherwise remote and 
many-sided material to vocational use, the more certainly 
and permanently will the worker come into possession of the 
broader life which he can share with those whose initial inter- 



142 CULTURE DISCIPLINE AND DEMOCRACY 

ests in a common knowledge and emotional experience differ 
from his own. The essential thing to culture fitted to a 
democracy is not that it shall have no utilitarian relation- 
ships or be taught in relationships which are not utilitarian, 
but that, wherever possible, it shall have relationships which 
are utilitarian in the most many-sided way. It must not 
have but a single door to be reached through some steep and 
secret path, but a thousand doors through any one of which 
the seeker after knowledge may enter, and through all of 
which he will at times depart. 

But to connect the aesthetic and the many-sided with work 
and even with wage earning does not mean that its rela- 
tionships must be exclusively or even predominantly voca- 
tional. There must be direct preparation for leisure distinct 
from preparation for work and potent enough to develop a 
liberal attitude of mind. The significant fact is that culture 
and direct preparation for phases of life other than leisure 
have in common many-sided ideas and activities — some of 
them aesthetic — which can be directly related to each. 

From it two important consequences follow: First, that 
vocation can be liberalized without losing its efficiency, and 
that culture can be related to the "half-truth" of service 
without losing its freedom. Second, that culture and other 
phases of direct preparation overlap. That is, discipline, 
specialization, and the various phases of direct preparation, 
including culture, require a many-sidedness that is in part 
identical. Democracy demands a culture which, made com- 
mon to all citizens through its many-sided interrelationship 
with direct preparation for life, shall not be displaced at any 
stage of the educational process by specialization, whether 
in vocation or in culture itself. It must precede 
1 t'n^^'f ^^^ accompany each. To it a vocational train- 
culture to ing that ignores the common culture, and a cul- 
vocation tural training which displaces it, are equally 
democracy! hostile. Dr. Gilbert has performed important 
public service in pointing out again and again 
the menace to American institutions which lies in a speciali- 



CULTURE DISCIPLINE AND DEMOCRACY 143 

zation in elementary education that prevents this common 
culture.^® So has Professor Hanus, who, with all of his 
championship of vocational courses in high schools, insists 
that they shall be given in the same building and center about 
a common arts and science course. '^^ 



6. A General Culture Related to Vocation Should Parallel All 
Vocational Specialization, and Direct Preparation, All 
Specialization in Culture 

The most critical situation lies in the higher education with 

its specialization in culture versus specialization in vocation. 

If the vocational specialist is insistent upon cul- „ ^, 

„ . . 1 . , , , Both cul- 

ture at all, it IS that it must precede rather than ture and 

accompany specialization. A four-year college speciaiiza- 
course, for example, is required for entrance to *^°ntin^tT 
the stronger colleges of law or of medicine. 
Finance and commerce show a better tendency in insisting 
upon the paralleling of technical courses with liberal study .'^^ 
Indeed, the practice of certain universities in allowing a 
certain amount of professional specialization within the arts 
and science course itself, gives the lead that points to the 
solution of the problem. Just as certainly as culture is a 
growth, should specialization be a slow development through- 
out a long term of years. Continuity is favorable to each. 
Through it habits and attitudes of mind are made certain, 
one being added to another until a sure system of ideas and 
activities results. Four years of pure arts and science work 
may create a distaste for vocation, while four years of exclu- 
sively technical work may mean arrested development if 
not atrophy in culture. The assumption that the cultural 
and the vocational are mutually exclusive in education is 
absurd. If they cannot co-exist in education, how can they 
co-exist in life itself, of which education, after all, is but a part. 
The real antagonism is between a culture remote from life, 
which despises work, and a vocational training which has no 
time for culture. Culture, like every other phase of direct 



144 CULTURE DISCIPLINE AND DEMOCRACY 

preparation for life, should at each stage of education parallel 
specialization and be paralleled by it. 

Even after the common culture has been attained, special- 
ization in culture must not be hostile either to it or to any 
other phase of direct preparation. Direct prep- 
aration'also ^-ration demands continuity as persistent as 
demands that demanded by culture and specialization, 
continuity ^^^ gQ must parallel specialization in culture 
and must ^ • i i ^i i. ^ ^' 

parallel all 2,5 certainly as both culture and direct prepara- 

specializa- tion must parallel specialization in vocation. The 
ti(m m cu - gY^dxxsite school or the college which specializes in 
culture should and will create the love for pure 
science, whose sacred vocation it will be to pass on and to 
advance the learning which it inherits; it can, but it must 
not, produce the pedant. It should and will produce a 
love of what is beautiful in nature and mankind; it can, 
but must not, produce a sensualist or voluptuary. It 
should and will produce a more spiritual citizenship; it 
can, but it must not, produce the man without a country 
who withdraws himself ''from the madness of the multi- 
tude," because "there is no one who ever acts honestly in 
the administration of the state, nor any helper who wiU save 
any one who maintains the cause of the just." 

7. The Obstacle to Common and Democratic Culture Which 

Lies in the Attempt to Develop Artistic Expression at the 

Expense of Aesthetic Appreciation 

Now that the great mass of individuals have a constantly 

increasing amount of leisure and rapidly multiplying means 

for its cultured enjoyment, perhaps the most serious obstacle 

to a democratic and common culture lies in insistence upon 

specific phases of culture that are democratic in the sense 

of being accessible to all, but undemocratic because all 

have not the capacity to attain them. This, of course, does 

not apply to many-sidedness in general, but to its aesthetic 

manifestations. Nor does it apply to the unfortunate limit 

to aesthetic appreciation imposed by such physical or mental 



CULTURE DISCIPLINE AND DEMOCRACY 145 

defects as color-blindness or inability to discriminate the 

ordinary gradations in musical sound. It rather consists in 

substituting for the development of an aesthetic appreciation 

possible to all normally constituted human beings the vain 

attempt to develop in all the artistic expression possible only 

to the few. The limit to effort to develop expression through 

the fine arts lies in interference with the development of 

aesthetic appreciation. Artistic expression is a form of 

specialization more unessential to general culture than are 

mathematics and the foreign languages to general discipline. 

It is possible to the many only in the form of -j.^, make 

loving familiarity with the art of the master who promotion 

interprets for all what he alone can express. That dependent 

. , r r 1 . upon 

IS, it can be a part of a common culture only m artistic skill 

the sense of an aesthetic appreciation which may doubly un- 
in itself be a truer and a deeper self-expression ^®°^ocratic. 
than is possible to the mass of us through artistic training. 
It is a double menace to democracy itself when the pro- 
motion of pupils to a higher grade in the public school sys- 
tem or admission to college is dependent upon either some 
form of artistic expression, which excludes many as incapable, 
or of a crude artistic appreciation which may be developed at 
the expense of aesthetic enjoyment. It is undemocratic in 
preventing pupils from being advanced for the sake of what 
can be left for the specialist without prejudice to culture. 
It is undemocratic in excluding or limiting the common cul- 
ture possible to all. In the elementary school a saving com- 
mon sense has prevented the requirement of such forms of 
artistic self expression as drawing, music, and literary com- 
position as conditional to promotion. They are customarily 
not regarded as "grading subjects," and pupils proficient in 
other branches are advanced regardless of their success or 
failure in them. They are undemocratic only in devoting 
to a hopeless effort to develop a common artistic expression, 
the time that can be successfully used for the development of 
a common aesthetic appreciation. 

In the secondary school, however, the required work in 
10 



146 CULTURE DISCIPLINE AND DEMOCRACY 

English fixed by uniform college entrance requirements has 
been emphasizing the analytic study of a few masterpieces 
of literature with a view to comprehension of literary tech- 
nique and the development of artistic criticism. Granting 
that it is within the capacity of the majority of pupils, it is, 
if not an unessential phase of culture, a barren substitute for 
the aesthetic appreciation from which it is distinct and to 
which it is more or less antagonistic. If one or the other is to 
be sacrificed, it is guidance in the reading of literature in all 
of its many-sidedness that should be required, and the inten- 
sive and technical study of specific writers that should be 
omitted or left to specialization. While the saner attitude 
of certain colleges and universities in making their only 
requirement for admission facility in the use of written 
English, if it does not involve more than simple and grammat- 
ical composition, is a step toward democracy in the sense of 
accessibility of the upper high school grades and the college 
to all pupils, it is a step away from democracy in the sense 
Democracv ^^ ^ common culture. The broad reading of 
demands good literature should be required, with due 
grammat- regard to individual tendencies and capacities. 
and a com- ^^- Harris had in mind not only democracy 
mon love of from the standpoint of accessibility, but also 
good litera- f j-qj^^ i]^q necessity for this common culture, when 

in 1894 he urged that the raising of the standard 
of admission to college was a "national disaster in education" 
which would prevent the leaders who mold public action, 
especially ''the poets and literary men," from entering college 
through the public school .'^^ 

As in the case of music and of art, the main criticism that 
can be made of the present requirements of the elementary 

school course in literature is that the time vainly 

Discovery devoted to artistic expression can be more profit- 
of genius 11. 1 . . . y-^ T 

practicable 2,bly given to aesthetic appreciation. Ordinary 

through the work in English composition, the mechanical 

work es* en- ^^^^ing possible and useful to all, concert sing- 

tiai for all. ing which does not involve reading by note, 



CULTURE DISCIPLINE AND DEMOCRACY 147 

though included in the course of study on other than cul- 
tural grounds, afford ample opportunity for the discovery 
of individuals capable of specialization in the fine arts. From 
the earliest years of the public school course provision for 
such specialization should be made, not alone through the 
schools of design and industrial art already provided in the 
great cities, but where specialized instruction in elocution, 
instrumental and vocal music, drawing, painting, and sculp- 
ture, cannot be given as an integral phase of public school 
instruction, through public scholarships in private institutions 
and the formal recognition of such private instruction as part 
of the regular work of the school. In the great cities schol- 
arships have already become com^m.on, but the recognition 
by the high school in Berkeley, California, and Chelsea, 
Massachusetts, of private instruction in music whose quality 
has been approved by school authority as one of the units 
necessary to graduation, is a pioneer step toward the encour- 
agment of a specialization in art that in no wise need inter- 
fere with school work essential to all.^^ Where specializa- 
tion cannot be carried on within the school, the least that the 
school can do is to prevent overwork by substituting it for 
some optional or elective subject which the school provides. 
In the majority of high schools outside the cities this will 
become practicable only through consolidation brought 
about through the co-operation of neighboring districts, now 
generally permitted by state law. In the elementary school 
it will be a part of the modified course of study that scientific 
research and enlightened public opinion will soon compel. 

8. The Rapid Multiplication of Means Through Which a Com- 
mon Aesthetic Appreciation can he Readily Developed 
For these necessary readjustments the training of aesthetic 
appreciation need not wait. The development of a sense of 
appreciation for the beautiful in painting and sculpture, 
personal dress, home decoration, and architecture can well 
take most of the time hopelessly devoted to self-expression 
through brush and pencil. Already marvellously well done 



148 CULTURE DISCIPLINE AND DEMOCRACY 

in such schools as the William Penn High School for Girls 
in Philadelphia, and the Trade Schools for Girls in Boston 
and New York City, such training as a means to 
More gen- happiness is an inalienable right of every child in 
thetic ap- the republic. It is such instruction, and not draw- 
preciation, ing, as urged by Dr. Harris in an address before 
abmty to^"^ t^^ National Education Association in 1889, that 
draw, es- is the essential condition to artistic production by 
sential to American industries."^^ There is an ample supply 
production. ^^ designers who can produce artistic as well 
as inartistic designs, the same skill in drawing 
being necessary to each. Indeed, in the more expensive 
products artistic designs are abundant. They have been 
largely lacking in the cheaper articles because there is little 
demand for them. Glaring color combinations, inartistic 
lamps and vases, gaudy dress goods, and impossible chromos 
are made — like the razors immortalized in Goldsmith's 
verse, — because they are easy ''to sell." It is not instruction 
in drawing, but the development of a truer sense of aesthetic 
appreciation in the masses, that will ultimately raise the 
artistic standards of American industry. 

Artistic material for such instruction is abundant. Repro- 
ductions of masterpieces of painting and sculpture, illustra- 
tions in the standard periodicals, stereographs, delicately 
tinted tissue papers for color combination in neckties, dress 
designing and hat trimming, specimens of ornaments, uten- 
sils and furnishings having the right lines and coloring, all are 
easily obtainable. Traveling and loan collections, together 
with co-operation from local artists, collectors, and manufac- 
turers, can greatly facilitate the work. To crown all, the 
school must use the moving picture machine as a means to 
the reproduction of what is most beautiful in motion, whether 
in nature, the drama, or every-day life. Architecture in a 
natural and human setting that makes it a thing alive, waves 
breaking upon a far-off shore, a mountain covered with a 
forest of rustling leaves, a minaretted mosque with its white- 
robed worshippers, a scene from Rip Van Winkle or Oberam- 



CULTURE DISCIPLINE AND DEMOCRACY 149 

mergau, unite to make it a veritable kaleidoscope of art. 
When, for the love of amusement and art, the very nation is 
beginning to go to school, the school through formal instruc- 
tion should play its part. 

While all this is true in the field of form and color, it is no 
exaggeration to say that in the field of music the phonograph 
and the pianola are doing all that the printing- 
press has done for literature. When all forms of music inde- 
music are more accessible to every individual and pendent of 
to every home than literature itself, is it not time for ^^^^^^^ 
the school to add to the rote-work which teaches 
mediocre singers how to read by note the development of a love 
for what has become immortal in music and in song? Reading 
by note is merely a favorable condition to singing, not neces- 
sarily to good singing, but to any kind of singing, especially 
to part singing in chorus. It encourages a form of avocation 
which may or may not be cultural, but which gives physical 
pleasure to an individual or a group and aesthetic enjoyment 
if not to an open-windowed neighborhood, at least to an ap- 
preciative home. My voice or my piano playing may be a 
''poor thing, but it is my own." The French critic, who not 
long ago protested against instrumental music ^ med*- 
in the public schools on the ground of the dis- ocre sing- 
comfort which the music of the ordinary home i^s useful 
gives to cultured ears which happen to be within ^j^^ ^^^ ' 
hearing, ignores the refining influence which even the devel- 
such music has upon ordinary family life, and the opment of 
wholesome and happy avocation which it affords 
to the singer or performer himself. It is good for the village 
blacksmith to hear his daughter's voice and it is good for the 
daughter to sing. It is a phase of avocation quite distinct 
from culture, but, far from being a menace to it, may aid in 
developing it. We are happily unconscious of our own aes- 
thetic lacks on the side of expression, and do not hear our- 
selves as others hear us, any more than we can '^see ourselves as 
others see us." Our interest in our own poor music, however, 
may be the step by which we rise to a love of truer melody. 



150 CULTURE DISCIPLINE AND DEMOCRACY 

On the other hand, the very effort to attain a higher musical 
level may be made at the expense of avocation in the home, 
if it takes the form of the cultivation of artistic 
artistic* skill expression in place of a gradual refinement of 
may be de- aesthetic taste. Where practice is substituted for 
veloped at t^g performance which helped make home life 
of avocatkm. enjoyable, specialization, even though purely 
artistic and the vestibule to culture and social 
popularity, may be bought too dear. Singing by note, how- 
ever artistic the specialization to which it occasionally may 
lead, must not interfere with or exclude the training which is 
intended to develop a true musical taste. Bad music is the 
most contagious of aesthetic diseases. We may not read at 
all; we may be blind to painting and to sculpture, good and 
bad alike, but we are bound to hum or whistle the newest song. 
Ragtime drifts into the singing book of the Sunday-school. 
It has taken the wise censorship of the pope himself to pre- 
serve the nobility and the dignity of the music of the church. 

Into this dead level of mediocrity and degeneration comes 
the Melba or Caruso record, oratorios, symphony, and grand 
opera; folk song and ballad are brought to the home that 
otherwise would hear the music of the street or the variety 
show. Ready to murder some thing of beauty, tempted by 
the allurement of some sensuous song, we have heard Pippa 
sing. 

The school must utilize and direct this new force in edu- 
cation. In Dayton, Ohio, for several years phonographs have 
The phono- been in successful use in the schools, the records 
graph ef- that are purchased or borrowed first being ap- 
Ih^^^Y ^T Proved by the school authorities. The manu- 
opment of facturers themselves have recently taken up the 
musical matter, and employed an expert supervisor of 
taste. school music to plan ways and means of intro- 

ducing phonographs into the schools. There is no reason 
why public school children, who, from their earliest years are 
familiar with what is most beautiful in vocal and instrumental 
music, should not gradually come to see the crudities and the 



CULTURE DISCIPLINE AND DEMOCRACY 151 

vulgarity of the songs that now tickle the popular ear. In 
1908, with the assistance of the Combe's Conservatory of 
Music, the children in each grade in the School of Observa- 
tion, conducted by the Department of Pedagogy in the 
Summer School of the University of Pennsylvania, were 
taught to associate the name of composition and composer 
with a number of the most striking and characteristic themes 
from great masterpieces. Twelve such selections, as Ruben- 
stein's Melody in F and the Sextette from Lucia, were readily 
recognized by the majority of the pupils after the presenta- 
tion of one or two of them five or ten minutes each day for a 
period of six weeks. If the choicest musical compositions are 
not only continuously presented through school and college, 
but, like ideas, are given the better chance of being remem- 
bered and recalled, that comes with fixed association with a 
name; if such instruction is supplemented when possible 
with visits to musicals, symphony concerts, oratorios, and 
grand opera, or, more rarely, the visits of great singers or 
instrumentalists to the schools ; if, as is rapidly coming to be 
the case, the children are themselves led to sing the ballads 
and folk songs urged by Dr. Hall, national airs, and all else 
that is truest and best, there is small danger that rote song 
and mechanical drill can make music uninteresting or that 
the national taste will become or remain corrupt. 

In higher education such taste should be made more crit- 
ical, or at least more intelligent, through knowledge of the 
history of music and of art. The old dominance 
of the intellectually formal is responsible for the menTof the 
fact that, with all the emphasis given in the col- history of 

lege to culture through literature, culture "^"^ic and 

8.rt m 
through music and art is not required. college. 

At no stage, however, must instruction forget 

the distinction between a common aesthetic appreciation and 

a specialized artistic expression, or even artistic appreciation 

in the sense of comprehension of musical technique. A too 

highly cultivated taste may rob one of much of the joy of 

living. Esthetic appreciation gives pleasure unalloyed, but, 



152 CULTURE DISCIPLINE AND DEMOCRACY 

like every other emotion, is decreased when intellectual judg- 
ment is brought to bear upon it. Indeed, artistic apprecia- 
tion not only involves an intellectual activity which serves as 
a check upon aesthetic enjoyment, but, being in itself pleasur- 
able, produces a feeling or emotion that is distinct from the 
aesthetic and tends to take its place. The "baseball fan," 
so familiar with technique as to be supersensitive to error, is 
the most popular example of artistic appreciation carried too 
far. The man who understands the game enough to know 
how it is being won enjoys himself as a sportsman, and not 
through a form of appreciation as professional as the play 
itself. Artistic appreciation in the fine arts, reaching its 
highest development in artistic criticism, too often produces 
a feeling of self-confidence and pride little likely to be 
aesthetic. At best, it is a phase of specialization in culture; 
at its worst, it is too technical to be cultural at all. 

The general course in the fine arts in high school and col- 
lege, whether in literature, music, painting, or sculpture, 
Definite- ^^ ^^^^^^ likely to produce art critics. It should 
ness makes add, however, a wealth of discriminations and 
aesthetic associations to the earlier and simpler aesthetic 
syst^e^matic, Pleasure which every student should have come 
cumulative to possess in art. Unlike the artistic criticism 
and endur- -^vhich, being immediate upon artistic presenta- 
*°^* tion, is likely to take the place of other feeling, 

these associations follow after the more immediate pleasures 
of aesthetic experience, and make them more enduring through 
mutual relationships in the common culture of which both 
feelings and associations are a part. 

9. Instruction in ^^sthetics Should Be Separate and Distinct 
from Other Phases of Instruction Which Interfere with It 
Elementary school work in reading and literature exempli- 
fies a secondary obstacle to aesthetic appreciation, closely 
allied to interference through specialization, yet distinct 
from it — interference through other phases of instruction. 
Mechanical mastery of written language, comprehension of 



CULTURE DISCIPLINE AND DEMOCRACY 153 

the thought of the writer, its vocal expression through oral 
reading and written composition, aesthetic appreciation of 
form of expression, and artistic appreciation due ^, 

. Xn6 v3.rious 

to a comprehension of rhetorical technique, are aims of lan- 
all separate and distinct, though complementary guage work 
aims, to be realized through separate and distinct ^^^^^J 
means that may at times conflict. Mechanical 
reading and writing, comprehension of a writer's meaning, 
ability to grammatically express one's own in ordinary com- 
position, even judgment of artistic technique must be re- 
quired of all pupils, but not in the sense of exacting a common 
standard for all. All must be able to sound out any word, and, 
if it is unfamiliar, to determine its meaning from the diction- 
ary; all must be able to write any word with some degree of 
legibility and readiness; all must be trained to avoid the com- 
mon errors of colloquial speech, and to at least identify the 
figures of speech and other forms of language which charac- 
terize a writer's style. But some pupils can never be skilled 
penmen; others will never read aloud in a way that will give 
pleasure to others; while educational experimentation and 
research have not yet determined whether the mass of Ameri- 
can children living in an ungrammatical environment can 
be made grammatical through such persistent repetition 
as is possible in school of correct forms alternative to com- 
mon blunders in speech. 

Artistic and literary self-expression, whether in the form 
of public reading and declamation, or of composition other 
than the emotional forms essential to all, belongs to spe- 
cialization. The attempt to develop it must neither be re- 
quired of all, nor carried so far with any but the specialist, 
as to sacrifice appreciation. 

On the other hand, all pupils can be taught to appreciate 
good literature aesthetically if it is impressively presented in 
sufi&cient variety, and other essential phases of language work 
are not allowed to conflict with it. The earliest obstacle to 
its development lies in failure to present the masterpieces 
of literature in the elementary school with suflicient elocu- 



154 CULTURE DISCIPLINE AND DEMOCRACY 

tionary or dramatic effect for them to be enjoyed. It is a 
Th fi t question whether any literary masterpiece can 
presenta- be read and re-read around the class by pupils 
tion of a deficient, not only in the vocal training neces- 
master- ^^^y ^^ pleasurable self-expression, but in the 
piece very mechanics of reading, without a feeling of 

should be distaste being engendered which is hostile to the 

development of appreciation of literary form, 
even where the subject matter is understood and presented 
with sufficient continuity to have interest through its mean- 
ing. It is at least safe to say that the impressive reading of 
masterpieces to the children by either the teacher or one 
especially well qualified to read them sympathetically and 
expressively can and should precede and parallel mechanical 
drill; that, where masterpieces are to be drilled upon, they 
should first be so presented; that much which is beautiful 
should be read to the children before they can sympathetically 
read it for themselves, and that much shall be so read which 
they will neither be called upon to read nor to write about. 
The effective work now being accomplished by the Junior 
Drama League under the inspiring lead of Miss Patton, to- 
gether with the increasing popularity of '' dramatization" in 
the ordinary reading work of the elementary school, is tend- 
ing to the same end. 

A second obstacle to the development of aesthetic appreci- 
ation lies in a juvenilizing of literature which robs it of its 

literary form in order that it shall be fully com- 

nilfz/ng of prehended. The objection is not against the 

literature writing of books for children, which often have a 

hinders literary charm of their own, but against the re- 

aesthetic ap- ... f. ^ . . , -..J, , 

preciation. writing 01 masterpieces m language so modified 

that children can understand, with a consequent 
loss of literary form. Charles and Mary Lamb took the plot 
of a play and gave it literary form for children, just as Shake- 
speare put it into dramatic form for all. To read the plot of 
a play not only does not detract from it, but results in a clearer 
comprehension of the part played by each character. But to 



CULTURE DISCIPLINE AND DEMOCRACY 155 

take literary masterpieces, in which the interest lies both in 
the interplay of characters and in the gradual development of 
the story as a whole, and through their simplification to rob 
the characters of the artistic details which make them alive, 
and to substitute the style of the school text-book for that 
which has made a great writer immortal, is to give full com- 
prehension at too high a price. The interest in the adapted 
subject matter is often gained by a loss of future interest in 
its orisfinal. While, even from the standpoint of ^ .,. . 

. , , Tuv6niliziii&[ 

comprehension, full comprehension, through ju- checks the 
venilization, prevents the steady growth to develop- 
intellectual maturity that is furthered through ™®^* °J 
the partial mastery of a multitude of new terms, 
held in mind through interest in a great story, to whose com- 
prehension as a whole they are non-essential, but in whose 
fuller comprehension even their partial understanding plays 
a necessary part, ^sthetically regarded, they are the over- 
tones of literature. If children are to hear the masterpiece 
at all, it should be on the violincello or the grand piano, not 
on the penny pipe. Even if the harmonies of expression 
which constitute literary style were harmonies of sound alone, 
the children who constantly hear them develop an apprecia- 
tive and discriminating ear for beauty in language, as Pe- 
trarch came to love the sonorous cadence of the Greek which 
as yet he could not understand. 

As a matter of fact, however, the most certain way of 
amplifying vocabulary for children, as for the more mature, 
is by much reading, limited neither by ability in spelling nor 
ability to fully comprehend. This was the lesson taught in 
the discussion of mere remembrance as a means to apper- 
ception. 

Matthew Arnold, who, more than any other, is responsible 
for the introduction of good literature into the elementary 
school, is primarily responsible for another phase of work 
hostile to culture — the concentration upon masterpieces 
as wholes which has become so common in the grammar 
grades. It is easy to sympathize with his impatience 



156 CULTURE DISCIPLINE AND DEMOCRACY 

over young Philistines who referred to Shakespeare as the 

writer of the judgment scene in the Merchant of Venice, but 

Intensive ^^^^ remedy does not he in giving half a school year 

study of to the Merchant of Venice or the Courtship of 

master- Miles Standish to the exclusion of dozens of in- 

pieces as . , 

wholes can terestmg and representative extracts from great 

be hostile writers otherwise not represented in class work, 
to culture. ^^^ rather in encouraging or requiring pupils to 
follow up class work by individually reading as wholes the 
masterpieces whose parts interested them most. Indeed, Mr. 
Arnold himself strongly recommended the reading of a variety 
of shorter poems in preferance to a lengthy masterpiece.'^'' 
The many-sidedness necessary to culture must still be brought 
about for the majority of Americans, if brought about at all, 
in the elementary school. In music and the other fine arts, 
as well as in literature, continual and impressive presentation 
of what is most beautiful, not in the work of some one, but of 
all the masters, should be made at the stage of aesthetic 
development to which they are best adapted, both for the 
sake of many-sidedness and the encouragement of selection 
through individual interest, without which individual many- 
sidedness is impossible. 

10. Both Direct Preparation and General Discipline, Being 
Conditioned by Emotional Form of Expression, Must 
Include a Part of the Content Most Useful for Culture 
What makes adequate emphasis of the aesthetic phase of 
culture more readily possible through the public school sys- 
tem is not only the fact that much cultural material can be 
related to other phases of direct preparation for life without 
menace to culture, but that, as already demonstrated, effect- 
ive furtherance of both direct preparation and general dis- 
cipline demands far greater emphasis than is now being given 
in the school to the emotional form of expression possible 
only through literature, music, and art. This means some- 
thing more than the occasional inclusion of culture in various 
other phases of direct preparation. It is true that to love 



CULTURE DISCIPLINE AND DEMOCRACY 157 

mountains, seas, woods, and flowers, or the masterpieces of 

art and literature which a nation has produced, is an essential 

part of love of country, just as the artistic affectation which 

depreciates American art and slavishly imitates foreign 

modes is a weak form of treason. Similarly, the love of the 

beautiful in nature and of the good in art strengthens our 

love of the divine as surely as enjoyment of a realism that 

sings or paints the beauty of what is sensuous and base im- 

consciously unveils a soul that is partly lost. But if life's 

aims are to be fully realized, if the emotional centers necessary 

to useful discipline are to be developed, instruc- .^he fine 

tion must not only welcome these indirect contri- arts must 

butions of culture, but must directly utilize all of ^^^ther di- 
' 1 • rect prepa- 

its emotional forms as a means to cumulative ration and 

impression. What inspiration must have come general 

to the Greek boy as his religious faith, his national *®"^ ^®* 

ideals, the standards of his social life, were taught him not 

through the adjurations of pedagogue or harp-master, but 

with the melody and power of ringing Homeric verse. "And 

when the boy has learned his letters, and is beginning to 

understand what is written, as before he understood only 

what was spoken, they put into his hands the works of great 

poets, which he reads at school; in these are contained many 

admonitions, and many tales and praises and encomiums of 

ancient famous men, which he is required to learn by heart, in 

order that he may imitate or emulate them and desire to 

become like them. And, when they have taught him the use 

of the lyre, they introduce him to the poems of other excellent 

poets, who are the lyric poets; and these they set to music, and 

make their harmonies and rhythms quite familiar to the 

children's souls, in order that they may learn to be more 

gentle and harmonious and rhythmical, and so more fitted for 

speech and action ; for the life of man in every part has need 

of harmony and rhythm. "^^ Reverence for God cannot be 

adequately taught from catechisms, or love of country from 

dry-as-dust text-books. A longing for social service will not 

spring from the most convincing statistics, or the joy of 



158 CULTURE DISCIPLINE AND DEMOCRACY 

labor from discourses on morals and economics. Definite- 
ness of creed requires the formal statement of divine attri- 
butes and patriotism, of the doctrine of equal . rights, as 
general discipline demands the certain formulation of any 
other potent idea. But.it is the poems of saints and of 
patriots, the rhapsodies of the prophets and orations of states- 
men, the eloquent descriptions of mighty deeds, ballads, 
and oratorios, dramas and paintings, statues and cathedral 
spires, the aesthetic inheritance of the race, that form the man 
of spirit and inspire him to speech and to action. It is not 
through mere exercises in elocution, or the committing to 
memory of gems of literature, but in the association with the 
most useful ideas of the common feeling which springs from 
a cumulative mass of emotional material, that culture must 
be brought to bear. The most spiritual culture is not found 
in aesthetic leisure, but in the emotional furtherance of all 
that is noblest and truest in life. 

II. Culture Not Only Included in Direct Preparation, hut 
Dependent Upon It 

On its aesthetic side, then, as well as in its many-sidedness, 
culture has much in common with every other phase of direct 

preparation. The many-sidedness which fur- 
involves all thers them furthers it, and many of the relation- 
phases of ships peculiar to it are helpful to them. This 
aration^'^^^' i^^^^^^ity of subject matter is even more apparent 

when it is analyzed from the standpoint of formal 
self-activity. Culture does not merely consist of an attitude 
of mind — the cumulative impressions of a college course. 
While aesthetic judgments and experiences are largely emo- 
tional, culture, in the broad sense, also includes mere remem- 
brance, varying apperception, and specific and general dis- 
cipline. And whether it is a steadily decreasing factor in in- 
dividual life, or becomes a dominating force, depends upon the 
extent to which its fundamental relationships are made cer- 
tain and permanent, and become the centers for constantly 
var3dng association and application. True culture is a 



CULTURE DISCIPLINE AND DEMOCRACY 159 

growth, not a vague but lingering recollection of the beautiful, 
and demands not appreciation only, but imagination and 
reflection. There is only partial justification for the old 
saying that there are certain things in education which a 
gentleman must have forgotten — a quip that possibly has its 
origin in the medieval distinction which led Montaigne's 
two travelers to insist that they were grammarian and logi- 
cian. It was the scholar, and not the gentleman, who found 
it necessary to remember. The gentleman could forget his 
Greek and Latin after they had opened the door to a litera- 
ture whose impressions would always linger in the heart and 
soul. 

But modern culture at least includes definite and specific 
relationships which must continue to be held in mind, from 
grammatical speech — its first prerequisite on the social side — 
and certainty of information concerning not only individual 
masterpieces, but the fine arts, to the subtle distinctions and 
fixed tenets essential to aesthetic specialization. 

Useful imagination, even though aesthetic, and reflection, 
though confined to the beautiful, are impossible without both 
the fixed relationships, w^hich constitute a specific culture de- 
aesthetic discipline, and those which are included mands the 
among the conditions favorable to its general continuity 
application. An interrelation with other phases through 
of direct preparation is, therefore, desirable for relationship 
culture, for the sake of remembrance and contin- *° 
uity as well as of completeness of representation. The more 
culture is interrelated with direct preparation, the more com- 
plete and more enduring it will be, the more it will tend to 
dominate sensibility and action, both through common recur- 
rence with what is itself most certain and enduring, and 
through the greater many-sidedness and surer general disci- 
pline to which definiteness and certainty are essential. It 
of necessity follows that the emphasis of direct preparation 
in the course of study found favorable to general discipline is 
also favorable to culture. 



l6o CULTURE DISCIPLINE AND DEMOCRACY 

12. The Study of Greek and Latin, Even from a Purely Cultural 
Viewpoint, Belongs to Specialization Rather than to 
General Education 

It must be granted that just as mathematics and the 
languages possess an advantage from the standpoint of specific 
Classical discipline through the fact that their peculiar 
culture form of organization compels it, so the Greek 

made most ^^^^ ^j^g Latin possess the advantage from the 
and^useful standpoint of culture, that they cannot be mas- 
through tered — at least in their more advanced stages — 
translation. ^i|-}^Qu|^ certainty of contact on the part of the 
student with the noblest forms of literature and art. Op- 
posed to this is the failure of the great mass of Greek or Latin 
students to reach the cultural stage of study, the immense 
amount of time expended by those who do, and insistence by 
certain specialists upon the reading of artistic passages flag- 
rant in the paganism and immorality dreaded by the early 
church fathers. The useful part of the classical content can 
be made just as certain of mastery, and far more accessible, 
without the study of the classical languages; while such parts 
of it as are pagan and immoral need not be included in the 
education of youth through contemptuous insistence upon an 
artistic whole. The contribution of Greece and Rome to 
universal culture will perform an increasingly important ser- 
vice in education as it finds its final and permanent place in 
each modern vernacular, as a part of the far broader whole 
which is required of all, in place of itself constituting a nar- 
rower whole requiring the mastery of languages which, in 
other ways, are useful only to the specialist, and render a 
higher cultural training impossible to the mass of ad- 
vanced students. It is only as language study includes 
literature, and not, as Dr. Harris insisted, through 
forms not ''the effect of the mere language in its idioms and 
essential to its grammatical structure," that one is put "into 
art, Altera- the atmosphere of art, literature, and science."''^ 
science. Idioms and grammar are not necessary to put 



CULTURE DISCIPLINE AND DEMOCRACY i6i 

one "into the stern, self-sacrificing, political atmosphere of 
Rome." They are not necessary to the splendid examples 
to which Thomas Arnold points when he exclaims, "Aristotle, 
Plato, and Thucydides, and Cicero and Tacitus are most 
untruly called ancient writers. They are virtually our own 
countrymen and contemporaries, but have the advantage 
which is enjoyed by intelligent travelers, that their observa- 
tion has been exercised in a field out of the reach of common 
men, and that, having thus seen in a manner with our eyes 
what we cannot see for ourselves, their conclusions are such 
as bear upon our own circumstances; while their information 
has all the charm of novelty, and all the value of a m.ass of 
new and particular facts, illustrative of the great science of 
the nature of civilized man."''^ It is doubtless this point of 
view that Mr. Roosevelt has in mind when he commends the 
new Amherst plan from the standpoint of citizenship. But 
if, as is not the case, the study of the Greek and the Latin 
languages should be necessary to give the viewpoint of an- 
cient worthies, it would still remain "out of the reach of 
common men," and the most that could be said for it would 
be that the men who specialized in it would find much that 
interprets modern life. 

Unessential to the majority of individuals, both for the 
attainment of the noblest contributions to culture and 
civilization, and from the standpoint of general discipline, the 
ancient languages, no longer required of the general student, 
become an increasingly precious charge upon the specialist. 
For such specialization the new Amherst would afford a 
highly favorable opportunity, and other institutions here 
and there throughout the country might well afford to follow 
the lead which the group of her alumni have suggested. 

But from the standpoint of the general student, 
the present relationship of the classics and of an- tionship of 
cient history must be reversed. In place of con- the classics 
densing ancient history in the high school to an apd of an- 
intensive study of Greece and Rome, which all torymustbe 
students who elect history are too frequently com- reversed. 
11 



l62 CULTURE DISCIPLINE AND DEMOCRACY 

pelled to take for the sake of those who are to study the Greek 
or Latin languages, all students should be required to read 
good translations of those parts of ancient literature which 
throw the most light upon history and give to the most useful 
contributions of ancient peoples their highest emotional ex- 
pression. Ancient literature, as a whole, cannot be related 
to modern life, and even the efforts of Thomas 

Failure of Arnold to so relate it resulted in absurd imita- 
attempt to 

relate the tions by others. Mr. Quick, for example, rep- 
classics as resents one of his fellow- workers as asking of his 
modern life, pupils not only, "Is any modern expedition like 
Caesar's? Are modern people like Britons? Are 
we Britons?" but "Which in the form is most so?" and "Is 
Napoleon III more nearly descended from Julius Csesar, 
Cassivelaunus, Caractacus, or the Ubii?" 



13. The Material of Culture, Whether Ancient or Modern, 
Proved Most Useful By the Test of Relative Worth, Will 
Be Possible to All and Must Be Required of All 

The same many-sidedness of useful relationship, frequency 
of useful recurrence, and degree of useful sensation or emotion 
that test relationships in general, must form the basis for the 
selection of cultural material, whether ancient or modern. 
The result must be a common culture for the masses, which 
precedes specialization whether in vocation or in culture 
itself, and continues to parallel it at every stage of develop- 
ment. It must be a culture possible to all and required of all. 
Related as far as is practicable to every other phase of direct 
preparation, it will no longer, on the one hand, be hostile to 
technical training, and, on the other, fail to gain the certainty 
and continuity that its emotional furtherance of direct prep- 
aration will give. 



CULTURE DISCIPLINE AND DEMOCRACY 163 

14. With Both Culture and General Discipline Assured through 

Direct Preparation, No Further Ground Re?nains for 

Excluding from Higher Education the Students Who 

Fail in the Old Formal Subjects 

Above all, with both culture and general discipline thus 

assured through direct preparation for life, no further ground 

remains for excluding from a higher education ^ , . 

r '^ - .^ ^ A lie in u 1 Exclusion of 

the pupils who fail m the old ''formal or cul- mediocre 

tural" subjects. Common concentration for all students 

students, upon a branch of mathematics and a ^^°°^ ^^" ^ 
' ^ r J r • 1 vancement 

language, is not a panacea for a detective mental fatal both 

training which either the science of education or to individ- 
republican institutions can permit. To exclude democracy, 
from high school or college young men and young 
women economically able to enter, through insistence upon 
subjects unrelated to direct preparation for life, and the 
assumption that individuals who fail to master them are not 
adapted for higher liberal training, is fatal both to individual- 
ism and democracy. It is fatal not only from the standpoint 
of the citizen, through preventing the exercise of an equal 
right to a higher education which, so far as economic condi- 
tions permit, should be as universal as elementary education 
itself, but from the standpoint of the state, through denying 
to the school the opportunity to, so far as possible, compel the 
more advanced direct training as essential to enlightened 
citizenship as to leadership. Under present economic con- 
ditions the state cannot make higher education compulsory, 
but it can refuse to permit any unnecessary obstacle to a 
form of individual betterment which so surely promotes its 
well-being. The high school and college do not gjgjj 
exist merely for the training of leaders whose school and 
names may figure in some future "Who's Who in ^^^^^^:^^^ 
America?" and the measure of their usefulness only for the 
lies but partially in the proportion of great names training of 
enrolled upon their alumni registers. No matter 
how unmathematical the mind that they attempt to discipline, 
no matter how reluctant the tongue to repeat the accents of 



1 64 culture: discipline and democracy 

other peoples, every useful relationship that is made certain 
and sure, every addition to many-sidedness of knowledge, 
every right impression that is re-enforced, even each partial 
retention and understanding of great thoughts — the relative 
failure at which the pedant jeers — tends to raise the general 
level of individual life and of the civilization to which it gives 
rise. When it is economically possible, each individual must 
have not only the vocational or specialized training for which 
he is individually most fit, but the more advanced stages of 
direct preparation for life in general that should be common to 
all fellow-citizens in community and republic. As Isocrates 
said of the training of the orator, "But as for those who are 
of a weaker genius, it will never render them adroit pleaders 
or great orators; but it will make them excel themselves, and 
become more prudent in many things. "^^ 



CHAPTER VI 

UNIFORMITY FOR VARIOUS LOCALITIES IN THE GENERAL 
COURSE OF STUDY LIMITED TO THE ESSENTIAL RE- 
LATIONSHIPS WHICH MUST BE CERTAINLY MEMORIZED 

I. The Fundamental Nature of the Distinction Between Essen- 
tial Relationships Which Must he Specifically and Per- 
manently Memorized and the Optional Relationships Left 
to Individual Apperception 
In the light of present educational tendencies, and espe- 
cially in view of the extreme reaction from mechanical memor- 
izing, the fact most significant to formal self- r^^^ para- 
activity, which resulted from its analysis, is the mount im- 
paramount importance of specific discipline. It portance of 
is useful not only in itself, and as a means to useful cipUne and, 
remembrance and apperception, but pre-eminently hence, of 

both as the first stage of general discipline and mechanical 
,.. . ,, r T- memorizing, 

among the conditions favorable to it. It is 

not less memorizing than was characteristic of the old educa- 
tion that is called for, but more. The distinction between the 
old and the new must not continue to be the distinction be- 
tween discipline and varying apperception, but must come to 
be between the memorizinsr of facts as facts and the memoriz- 

o 

ing of essential relationships; between the devotion of all 
school time to the memorizing of far more than can be per- 
manently retained, and the certain memorizing and retention 
of as much as is useful and possible, with time physiologically 
and psychologically limited. This physiological and psycho- 
ological limit to the time that can be effectively spent in 
memorizing, and hence to the amount of subject matter that 
can be retained in definite and specific relationships, indicates 
the most fundamental pedagogic distinction, both for curric- 

165 



166 CULTURE DISCIPLINE AND DEMOCRACY 

ulum and method. It is the distinction between specific rela- 
tionships, relatively so useful that they n: List be made certain 
and permanent, and specific relationships perhaps little less 
useful, that cannot be repeated often enough to be made per- 

^, , manent. That is, determination ot the relative 

The test for . , . ' . . , . , . , 

determining usefulness 01 particular retationships, direct and 

relation- indirect, is the only mode of determining which 

s ips o e should be made specific and certain in the time 
memorizea . ^. . 

identical for effective for repetition,and which must remain 
direct prep- variable and uncertain. 

formal 'self- Fortunately, as has already been demonstrated, 
activity, the test of relative worth is identical, whether the 
and special- relationship in itself involves direct furtherance 
through specific discipline, or is acquired as a 
means to indirect furtherance through formal self-activity 
that is not specific. For each phase of the educational aim, 
for each form of educational self-activity, for every specialized 
vocation or branch of knowledge, that particular relationship is 
most useful which is greatest in its relative m.any-sidedness of 
helpful relationships, frequency of useful recurrence, and 
degree of stimulus to useful sensation or emotion. If exact 
determination of relative worth of relationships were desir- 
able, it thus becomes theoretically possible. Many-sided- 
ness, recurrence, and degree can be counted and measured. 

2. The Obviously Greater Usefulness of Essential Material and 
the Abundance of Optional Material of Approximately 
Eqtial Usefulness Make an Exact Determination of 
Relative Worth Unnecessary 
Practically, however, precision is unnecessary. Both from 
the standpoint of time effective for memorizing, and that of 
the relatively small number of relationships sufficiently useful 
to be made definite and permanent, the differences in relative 
worth between the most useful relationships and the least 
useful are so great that they are easily distinguished. Be- 
tween them there is a safe margin of material, useful enough 
for certain memorizing, if time permits, but which can never be 



CULTURE DISCIPLINE AND DEMOCRACY 167 

made permanent through persistent review. In this optional 
content, useful enough to be presented to all, but from which 
each individual will choose and retain a varying amount in 
varying relationships, the precise determination of relative 
worth would involve closer comparisons and finer distinctions. 
But the very fact that individual variation in retention and 
apperception is inevitable makes it immaterial as to which 
are included from among a number of ideas or activities 
whose relative usefulness is so nearly equal as to make precise 
evaluation necessary to its calculation. That is, individual 
variation in apperception will modify optional relationships 
to such an extent as to practically offset all minor differences 
in their theoretical usefulness. 

3. It Follows that Courses of Study ^ While Uniform in Their 
Essential Relationships, are Identical in the Relative 
Usefulness of Their Optional Relationships Rather than 
in the Optional Relationships Themselves 

It follows that the same years or grades in courses of study 
in different institutions and localities, in branches rich in 
content, will be identical only in relationships that they ex- 
clude altogether, and in those that are definitely and certainly 
memorized. That is, they will be identical in relationships 
so useless or harmful that they are omitted altogether, and in 
those so essential that all indi\dduals must definitely and cer- 
tainly master them in common, and usually as a specific part 
of a definite system of similarly essential ideas and activities. 
With the optional material estimation of comparative worth 
of relationships will result in uniformity of content and cur- 
riculum, but in a uniformity which consists not so much in 
identity in the details of subject matter as in the type of 
details and their approximate usefulness. 

In science, for example, the same essential principles will 
be memorized by all individuals and in all localities, but the 
details which illustrate them will be partly identical and 
partly variable, according to the smallness or largeness of the 
number of those approximately equal in their usefulness. 



l68 CULTURE DISCIPLINE AND DEMOCRACY 

Oxidation should everywhere be illustrated by rust, decay, 
combustion, and respiration — the few examples most fre- 
quently recurring in e very-day life, — but rust might in some 
environments be better illustrated by scaling tinware, in 
others by tarnished coins or door-plates, and in still others 
by tools or machinery left out of doors. Given approxi- 
mately the same degree of emotional interest, the same heroic 
achievement will be illustrated in Holland, by sea-beggar and 
burgher, as in America by continental and pioneer, but the 
stories of Leonidas and of Von Winkelried become universal 
through the exceptional force of their appeal to an essential 
feeling. Various courses of study need not contain the 
same poems or even masterpieces by the same poets, but 
all must contain a sufficient variety to develop, in so far as 
possible, in each individual a love of some truly poetical 
verse. Two equally useful text-books in history could be 
written for the same group of children which would be differ- 
ent in almost all details, with the exception of the essential 
relationships, which should be made certain for all. 

After all, however, the tendency that results from contin- 
ual consideration of the relative worth of relationships is 
The appu- toward identity as well as general uniformity. At 
cation of the many points in the course of study, where there 
test will jg j^Q^ ^ variety of material equally many-sided, 
identity in recurring or emotional, identity of optional mate- 
courses of rial becomes as necessary as identity of essential 
^^^^y- material itself. In this there is no menace to 

individuality or to formal self-activity that is not specific. 

Individuality will assert itself, and the variety of associa- 
tion demanded by cumulative impression, mere remembrance, 
and varying apperception will be brought about, without 
regard to uniformity or lack of uniformity in curricula, if 
sufficient time is allowed in the school program for the pre- 
sentation of optional material that is not to be made certain 
and specific. Of course, a minimum of individuality would 
be developed in spite of an irrational and unpedagogical effort 
to have all subject matter definitely and permanently re- 



CULTURE DISCIPLINE AND DEMOCRACY 169 

tained. Its development is encouraged, however, together 
with that of the forms of educational self-activity dependent 
upon varying relationships, where optional content is given 
due recognition in the course of study. While the first step 
toward due recognition is specification and limitation of the 
essential relationships that are to be definitely and certainly 
mastered, and, therefore, to a limited extent specification of 
the optional material with which it is compared, the proper 
emphasis of optional material is not assured. Teachers who 
have been striving to bring about such memorizing of the 
entire content of text-books as will make it possible for all 
pupils to repeat from 50 to 75 per cent, of any facts that an 
examiner may happen to select, are likely to look upon limi- 
tation of the amount of essential material as an 
opportunity for more "thorough" work. The j^j. ^jj^ 
time so gained can readily be worse than wasted, training of 
if devoted to the even more monotonous repeti- teachers to 
tion and review that is possible with a smaller individual 
number of facts. There must be positive pro- appercep- 
vision and requirement of optional material and ^^^^ *^ 
training in the most effective methods of pre- 
senting it. More than this, it must be tested for and recog- 
nized in determining promotion. No school or school sys- 
tem is efficient which cannot stand the test which determines 
what each pupil individually knows as the result of varying 
apperception, as well as what he retains and applies of the de- 
finite and specific relationships exacted in common of all. On 
the one hand, he must be asked to give back the precise thing 
which he has been taught; on the other, he must be given 
opportunity to tell whatever the thing taught calls to mind. 

4. The Certain Memorizing of Essential Relationships a 
Necessary Condition to the Mastery of Optional Material 

Not that there is no connection between varying appercep- 
tion and specific discipline. The more one definitely and 
certainly retains, the more one has to remember by and 
think with. The "stupid" boy, who may be only a poor 



I70 CULTURE DISCIPLINE AND DEMOCRACY 

memorizer, will be given a better chance from the stand- 
point of imagination itself, if the relationships which are most 
many-sided in their usefulness, are drilled upon until he can- 
not help getting them. Perhaps time lost in impressing his 
*'dulness" may be compensated for in the comparative 
readiness with which he will retain what has once been 
memorized. Such a pupil often succeeds in some phase of 
life outside, as he ought to have succeeded in preparation for 
every phase through the school, either because the repetition 
of certain factors essential to individual efficiency is remorse- 
lessly persistent, or because, finally, conscious of his need of 
others, he perseveres until they become a part of him. Or 
one may be a ready memorizer, but still lack varying apper- 
ception, and, therefore, general discipline, because he either 
memorizes things that are not many-sided, or, not having 
been made conscious of their many-sidedness through the 
varying perception of optional material in school, remains 
unconscious of it throughout his lifeless and monotonous 
existence. On the other hand, the careless, the lazy, and 
even the brilliant pupil may be ready in memorizing and 
weak in retentiveness. He may remember the useful thing 
for a time, and temporarily apperceive it in its multiple rela- 
tionships, but fail to retain it in the specific form in which it 
is most many-sided, or to make the relationships habitual 
in which it is most useful. For every type of pupil, whether 
from the standpoint of ensuring their initial memorizing or 
permanent retention, or from that of predetermining what 
is most likely to be retained through association with them, 
essential relationships must be persistently called to mind in 
and through the school. R. H. Quick, while himself largely 
The most responsible for popularizing the ideals of the 
essential *'new education," and, believing that "unless 
relation- interest is aroused, the mind — of the young at 
be made least — does not and cannot work," insisted just 
certain in as emphatically that "the only way of really 
sc 00 . getting boys to know things properly is to go over 

and over again the same ground in class." 



CULTURE DISCIPLINE AND DEMOCRACY 171 

5. Ignorance of Essential Relationships Too Severe a Penalty 

for Carelessness or Incompetence 

There is a feeling on the part of many teachers that moral 
discipline demands that the incompetent or the careless boy 
should pay the penalty for his failure by being retained in 
lower classes or grades. Indeed, in some schools conduct is 
reckoned as determining promotion, and pupils actually able 
to do advanced work are held back as a punishment for idle- 
ness or misdemeanor. In others, teachers who have accepted 
self-activity as the ideal of the new education, without fully 
comprehending it or realizing the means essential to its real- 
ization, refuse to help children in their work on the ground 
that self-activity is thereby rendered impossible. 

How soon will an adequate professional training convince 
them that self-activity, whether in the form of morality or 
in that of independent thought and service, is not an unvary- 
ing condition to education, but too often its remotest end, 
and that school and teacher exist not for the sake of bringing 
the sinner to repentance, but to compel in all the truth that 
makes men free. 

6. For the Sake of Both Individual and State Essential Knowl- 

edge must be Compelled in School 

A system of public education exists less for the indi- 
vidual than for that of the community and the state. 
Precisely the same grounds on which every citizen is com- 
pelled to give financial support for the school and to 
ensure the attendance of his children, justifies the teacher 
in compelling, so far as is pedagogically possible, the train- 
ing for which the school exists. It is in the memorizing 
and retention of the relationships essential not only to 
direct furtherance of the aim, but to all likelihood of useful- 
ness for general knowledge and discipline, that instruction 
can and must be most exacting. No individual must be 
assigned an impossible task. Those who need four or five 
times the average amount of repetition for their initial memor- 



172 CULTURE DISCIPLINE AND DEMOCRACY 

izing must be distinguished from those who may need four 
or five times the normal amount of review in order to retain 
what may have been readily mastered. But more certainly 
than each future citizen knows his alphabet and multiplica- 
tion table, must he memorize and retain the few specific rela- 
tionships which are most highly useful, both in themselves, as 
directly furthering general preparation for life and specializa- 
tion, and as a means to every useful phase of formal self- 
activity. 

The amount of such subject matter limits itself. As but 
little material in unvarying relationships can be eft'ectively 
memorized and reviewed each day, it will consist in the ele- 
mentary grades mainly of facts and activities made certain 
in the specific relationships that are directly useful to the 
majority of pupils in the greatest number of other relation- 
ships and occurrences in every-day life. Some of them will be 
academic; some reorganized from the standpoint of various 
phases of the aim. All, if made certain through right method, 
will be disciplinary. They thus furnish the concentration 
necessary to specific discipline not through specialization in 
formal subjects, but through selection from all. 

7. Specialization Varying with Individuals Should Parallel 

Direct Preparation in General and he Paralleled by It, 

but Certain Memorizing of Its Essential Material Must 

at No Point in the Course of Study Interfere with that of 

the Common Content Essential to All 

Supplementing this essential or directly and certainly 

useful material is a far greater number of relationships, 

relatively but little less useful, which cannot be cer- 

Subjective tainly memorized by all in common, but which 

specializa- should be made as many-sided and interesting 

tion in the g^g possible, connected with life as much as pos- 

grades as- sible, and especially connected with the essential 

sured material. It should be presented to all pupils, 

oDtional ^^^ ^^^ pupils should be required to add from it 

material. to their common content, but they should not be 



CULTURE DISCIPLINE AND DEMOCRACY 173 

expected to retain the same parts of it or an equal amount 
of it. Subjective specialization will have its freest range in 
the elementary grades, through the individual mastery of this 
optional material, in varying detail and quantity, as deter- 
mined by varying interests and varying native retentiveness. 
It does not follow, however, that subjective specialization 
may not even here take on the more definite form of academic 
or even professional specialization. On the contrary, the 
highest efficiency cannot be reached, if a strong native ten- 
dency that fits one for an exceptionally successful study of 
some specific subject is not afforded opportunity for the 
highest useful development. The concession already made 
to music or the fine arts must also be made to the pure 
mathematics or practical mechanics. 

The initial limit to vocational specialization is found in 
economic conditions, not merely in the sense of necessity 
for wage earning, but in the extent to which many-sidedness 
will so increase efficiency as to justify the postponement and, 
hence, the shortening of the period of actual service. The 
postponement of manual occupation, even for the sake of an 
almost purely academic high school course of study, has been 
justified by the investigations of the Massachusetts Indus- 
trial Commission, of which Professor Hanus of Harvard 
was the head. The bearing of economic conditions 
upon the question of a four-year college course, in 
preparation for medicine and other professions, is at least 
partially dependent upon whether or not the four-year 
college course is to omit from its aim the "half-truth of 
service." 

In the high school and other secondary schools direct 
preparation for life in general must continue, if for no other 
reason than the fact that it covers the period gpecializa- 
of adolescence which, as Dr. Chancellor has tion must 
pointed out, is, on account of its potentialities 7^1? 7?^\ 
for good or evil, the most effective time for com- 
pulsory school attendance. Since the economic limit to pro- 
fessional specialization varies with individuals, the course 



174 CULTURE DISCIPLINE AND DEMOCRACY 

for this period of life will in some schools include directly 
vocational subjects; in others, subjects that are preparatory 
to vocational or academic specialization. In fact, in high 
school and college academic specialization solely reduces 
itself either to subjective specialization or to vocational 
specialization that itself should be subjective. That is, 
students should specialize either in that for which they 
are best fitted by natural ability, or for which they have 
acquired interest both with and without vocational in- 
tent. 

Any t3^e of specialization can result in the concentration 
and repetition necessary to specific discipline. Whether it 
does or does not, in any case depends upon the efficiency of 
pedagogic method. Now, it is clear that subjective tenden- 
cies which condition adaptation to individuality are most 
; certain to reveal themselves when the individual has been 
brought in contact in a many-sided way with all possible 
branches of knowledge and phases of activity. It follows 
that, even from the standpoint of specialization, many- 
sidedness must parallel specialization until specialization 
is complete. That is, while specialization may begin in 
the elementary school, it must, for its own sake, be 
paralleled through high school and college by an inde- 
pendent and possibly unrelated many-sidedness which may 
determine vocation — perhaps along lines quite different 
from those in which the earlier subjective specialization 
was begun. 

Specialization then, as already pointed out, whether 
directly for the sake of vocation, or as a condition to disci- 
pline, should vary with individuals. For the champions of 
formal discipline to ensure concentration through insisting 
that all candidates for admission to college should specialize 
in two or three common required subjects, would result in the 
continued exclusion of many not adapted by natural capacity 
to the work required, and in a lessening of the efficiency of all 
who could have specialized in other subjects to greater ad- 
vantage. 



CULTURE DISCIPLINE AND DEMOCRACY 175 

After the economic limit which compels vocational spe- 
cialization has been reached, it must become increasingly 
dominant in the educational content, but only 
as an increasingly important phase of direct prep- higher 
aration for life in all its phases. It must not grades spe- 
exclude direct preparation for right living, good "ahzation 
health, social and civic service, and the proper exclude 
employment of leisure. Here, however, the prob- review of 
lem of relative time and subject matter is not so f^ g^en^eral. 
simply solved as in the elementary school. Here, 
as there, the amount of time which can be effectively devoted 
to memorizing and review limits the number of specific and 
definite relationships which can be certainly fixed, and so 
leaves free range for individual selection from the optional 
m^aterial presented in many-sided relationship to them. But 
the specialized material is itself partly dependent upon defi- 
niteness and certainty of relationship and the study of 
branches as wholes. Hence, either the material essential to 
general phases of direct preparation must have been so thor- 
oughly mastered in the lower grades that only enough time 
need be devoted to it to ensure its amplification and review, 
or the professional course must be unduly prolonged. For 
the trained specialist, as well as for the masses, direct prep- 
aration for life must be mainly brought about in the ele- 
mentary school. But for all economically able to continue 
their education beyond it, a broader and more certain direct 
preparation must be ensured through high school, college, 
and even the most advanced types of vocational school. The 
point is never reached in education where an occasional lec- 
ture on the ethics of a profession or talk on personal purity, 
public hygiene, or good citizenship can take the place of sys- 
tematic, cumulative, and persistent training. In this extra- 
vocational m.aterial must also be included the common cul- 
ture necessary to democracy, both from the standpoint of 
service and of leisure. But it cannot be a content isolated 
from the every-day life of which vocation itself is a part. 
It must be twofold, on the one hand embracing cultural 



176 CULTURE DISCIPLINE AND DEMOCRACY 

material which includes or is associated with the definite 
and certain relationships necessary to morals, health, social 
service, good citizenship, and industry in general, and on 
the other that which includes or is associated with the 
material essential to proficiency in the vocation itself. To 
assume that a many-sided content, otherwise cultural, is 
rendered illiberal through specific and definite associa- 
tion with e very-day life, even in the sense of wage 
earning, is a blunder, pagan, aristocratic, and in itself 
illiberal. 

Direct preparation for life, specialization, culture, and 

discipline do not differ so much in the details which ensure 

many-sidedness through optional material, as 

Direct prep- ^^ ^^le fixed relationships or habits which each 
aration, ^ , ., 1 

speciaUza- brmgs to bear upon these common details and 

tion, cul- through which they are reorganized and made 

genera? dis- useful. That is, they differ in the relationships 

cipline have that are to be thoroughly memorized and perma- 

a common nently retained. Direct and general preparation 

content. ^^^ ^i^^> including the aesthetic training essential to 

culture, brings to bear relationships definitely and 

certainly useful to morals and religion, health, industrial 

efficiency, citizenship, social service, or individual and social 

leisure. These relationships are quite distinct from, though 

often inclusive of, those peculiar to the various academic 

branches. Vocational specialization equally direct brings 

to bear definite relationships peculiar to it, but includes all 

relationships which in a general way prepare for industrial 

efficiency, together with academic relationships and branches 

in part or as wholes. 

Indirect preparation brings to bear, through academic 
specialization and general culture, specific relationships 
which have been made at least temporarily certain through 
instruction, and through individuality relationships which 
have been made permanent through incidental but cumula- 
tive experience. 

If not directly related to what continually recurs in life, 



CULTURE DISCIPLINE AND DEMOCRACY 177 

purely academic or ''liberal" habits, whether due to academic 

specialization or developed as a part of general 

culture, soon cease to be habits. Losing their tionshbs" 

definiteness and certainty through lack of repe- essential 

tition, they become partial and variable concepts *° voca- 

\ ., . . ,1 • J. \. ^ tional and 

or impressions, constituting in their sum total general 

''the attitude of mind" which, potentially valu- education 
able in itself, is unworthy of President Hadley's ?^^*^? 1 
identification of it with a liberal "education" as a 
whole. It is what the traditional college education often is, 
not what it ought to be. At its worst it may result in aloof- 
ness from citizenship and disgust for practical affairs, and at 
its best, in a social bond between men who have had a com- 
mon training and experience, and a means to intelligent in- 
terest in current academic questions and affairs — virtues 
that are possessed quite as fully by those whose equally gen- 
eral training has been related to life. 

The habits developed through academic specialization and 
culture must remain definite and specific if specialization is 
to develop and culture to grow. While in part distinct from 
those which directly prepare for life, both general and voca- 
tional, they should be as fully as possible related to them, not 
only because through such a relationship to the part of the 
mental content which both instruction and every-day experi- 
ence will make most permanent they are themselves given 
the greatest likelihood of permanence, but because, if they 
should pass into the stage of mere remembrance or impression, 
they will, through such initial relationship, still have a great 
likelihood of usefulness. 

Both a partial identity of specific relationships and this 
necessity for associating specific relationships that are indi- 
rectly useful with those that are useful directly greatly sim- 
plifies the problem of apportioning between direct prepara- 
tion for life — general and vocational, — culture, discipline, and 
academic specialization, the limited time which, through 
physiological and psychological conditions, can be effectively 
and healthfully devoted to memorizing and review. The 
12 



178 CULTURE DISCIPLINE AND DEMOCRACY 

problem is further simplified by the analysis already made of 
the conditions necessary to general discipline. 

The concentration necessary to specific discipline, then, 
should be brought about for all individuals through the sys- 
tematic mastery of the relationships essential to 
The limited ^[Yect preparation for life, and for most indi- 
ive for viduals also through specialization in the particu- 

memorizing lar subject or subjects which either are peculiarly 
s^edaliza- adapted to their innate or acquired abilities or are 
tion on dis- essential vocationally. But school life is too short 
cipiinary ^^j^,^ ^j^g ^jj^g which Can be devoted to memorizing 
alone. ^^^ review too brief to require specialization 

by all pupils, on disciplinary grounds alone, in 
a formal subject the disciplinary efficiency of which is largely 
due to the necessity for memorizing and retaining its entire 
subject matter. Still less should it be required when its 
specific relationships are not connected with life in general 
and, therefore, certain to be soon forgotten by all but the 
specialist. Still less should it be required in view of the 
great variation in the native . retentiveness of students, which 
condemns a large portion of them to choose between failure 
in such a subject, overwork, or inability to memorize what is 
specifically essential in other studies. Still less should it be 
required for college entrance, when after being temporarily 
mastered in a preparatory school course, it is reviewed for 
entrance purposes in the spring and then so completely for- 
gotten in the fall as to awaken the distrust of college instruc- 
tors in the efficiency of preparatory school training. Concen- 
tration, for the sake of discipline on a subject such as this, 
not only means the readily apparent disproportion of time in 
hours per week, terms per year and years in course, but a 
much greater and far more serious disproportion in the de- 
mand upon the precious time available for memory work. 



CHAPTER VII 

THE INADEQUACY OF TESTS FOR THE MERE ELIMINATION 
OF HARMFUL, SPECIALIZED, OR IMPRACTICABLE MATE- 
RIAL FROM THE COURSE OF STUDY 

I. Dr. McMurry^s Test for Elimination Suggestive Rather 

than Determining 

A STEP which greatly simplifies the determination of the 
relative usefulness of relationships is the elimination from 
comparison of a great mass of material that is harmful, spe- 
cialized, or impracticable. Dr. Frank McMurry's well- 
known test was suggestive rather than practical.'^^ It will 
continue to have historical value from the fact that it turned 
the attention of investigators from the relative values of 
branches as wholes, to that of the constituent details within 
each branch. It became immediately popular from the 
situation that confronted the mass of teachers — the intro- 
duction of new subject matter into the course of study with- 
out any authoritative basis for the elimination of the old. It 
failed of application because of the vagueness or lack of 
definiteness of principles whose truth was self-apparent. 
No modern educational thinker is likely to deny that all 
details of subject matter should be excluded that are not 
useful in the broad sense, that are not capable of being related 
to other details, that are not within the comprehension of 
pupils and that are not interesting — unless lack of interest is 
balanced by obvious usefulness and readiness of comprehen- 
sion and relationship. But even in the sense of direct use- 
fulness, in which Professor McMurry and Dr. Rice use the 
term, it is unsafe both in being too inclusive and too exclus- 
ive. Relationships essential to the indirect furtherance of 

179 



l8o CULTURE DISCIPLINE AND DEMOCRACY 

the aim through general discipline must not be omitted, 
while all relationships directly useful to the race cannot be 
included. All ideas are capable of being related to other ideas. 
The whole problem of selection or rejection turns upon the 
relative usefulness of relationships. If Dr. McMurry had 
in mind exclusion of details that are not capable of being 
related to ideas in the minds of a particular class of learners, 
capability of relationship coincides with comprehension. 
But the possibility of comprehension at each stage of ad- 
vancement itself depends upon whether completeness of 
comprehension is exacted or whether a partial concept may 
be taught. The fact that the most useful of ideas and activi- 
ties are often the most complex through the very many-sided- 
ness of relationship that makes them useful, and, therefore, 
beyond the complete comprehension of particular classes of 
learners, is no reason why they should be excluded. On the 
contrary, as already pointed out in the discussion of formal 
self-activity, any idea highly useful to the mass of individuals 
can and should be taught in some partial relationship in 
even the lowest school grades as a means to both mere re- 
membrance and varying apperception. Finally, interest in 
the broad Herbartian sense in which Dr. McMurry uses 
the term, is possible w^herever there is comprehension, and is 
dependent upon organization of material and method of 
instruction, rather than on something inherent in the thing 
taught. While interest, inherent because dependent on 
sensation, measures degree of usefulness, its absence fails to 
afford safe ground for exclusion. 

The problem of elimination and selection is greatly simpli- 
fied, if sharp distinction is drawn between the determination 
of the single relationships whose sum total is to constitute the 
content of general education or of a particular phase of spe- 
cialization, and that of the relative usefulness of the factors 
involved in organization and method. With this distinction 
held in mind, both the "comprehension" and "interest" of 
Dr. McMurry's test are probably reducible to immediacy 
of many-sidedness, recurrence, and emotional appeal. 



CULTURE DISCIPLINE AND DEMOCRACY i8l 

2. A More Adequate Test for Total Rejection or Exclusion 

of Particular Relationships from Both Optional and 
Essential Content 

Limited to content, as distinct from organization and 
method, elimination, in the sense of the total rejection or 
exclusion of particular relationships from optional as well as 
from essential material, is governed by the following principles : 
Reject from the general course of study all relationships (i) 
which are antagonistic to any phase of the educational aim; 
(2) which are not useful to the majority of individuals who 
are not specialists, or in a specialized phase of education, 
to the majority of those who are; (3) which are either being 
effectively taught outside the institution for Principles 
which the course is intended, or which cannot be of elimina- 
effectively taught within it. These principles **°^* 
are definite enough to be readily applied by the mass of 
teachers, as well as by the experts responsible for text-books 
and for courses of study, and they have been in the minds of 
those who have been responsible for the elimination that 
in a few at least of the familiar branches already has been 
brought about. Witness expurgated editions of the ancient 
classics and selected masterpieces from too realistic modern 
writers, the omission from arithmetical practice work of 
operations and terminology peculiar to highly specialized 
occupations, of detailed campaigning from history, and of 
anatomical and physiological technique from hygiene. But 
a more thorough application of the test by experts and com- 
mittees of experts will serve to check the enthusiasm of the 
specialist, and regulate a selection that is still often too in- 
clusive. 

3. Necessity for the Further Exclusion of Material Hostile to 

the Educational Aim 

From the standpoint of culture, the exclusion of the 
immoral, the unhealthy, the undemocratic, has already 



l82 CULTURE DISCIPLINE AND DEMOCRACY 

been discussed. The more artistic or realistic the thing 

The im- that is sensual or foul, especially if it is some 

moral more general idea that may become an habitual 

harmful if feeling or attitude of mind, the general stimulus 

it IS m *^ . 

aesthetic to many-sided thought and action, the greater 

form. its menace to useful development and right living. 

Even the vivid descriptions of the immoral intended, like 

those of Tolstoi, to show the inexorable punishment of social 

evil, together with current effort to teach personal purity 

through a biological treatment of sex-hygiene, are far more 

likely to re-enforce the ever-present temptations of sense, than 

to impress the mind with consequences that are impersonal 

and remote. In any event, there is no room in a college 

course in literature for certain phases of Walt Whitman's 

materialism or the contagious spirit of a drinking song. It 

is not necessary, however, to carry elimination or expurgation 

to such a length as the total abstaining lover of Scott, who 

made Lochinvar, at least at one point, a safer model for youth 

by substituting for the lines, "With this lost love of mine to 

dance but one measure, drink one cup of wine," the less 

alluring couplet, "With this lost Scottish maid to dance but 

one measure, drink one lemonade." 

Benjamin Rush pointed out the danger to democracy in 

turning Dolly Madisons into Janice Merediths through the 

reading of romances that idealize aristocratic 

h til^*to^ society. From this viewpoint may it not be 

good citi- inadvisable to include in American school history 

zenship graphic descriptions of lordly pomp and royal 

excluded. pageantry, as it would be in that of Russia to 

sympathetically picture the French Revolution. 

In our teaching of patriotism we can never afford to omit the 

heroic achievements in time of war that have given us our 

national heroes, but we can safely eliminate all that tends 

to stimulate to bloody combat and unjust conquest. The 

story of Hannah Dunstan or of Captain Jack was good for 

our pioneer ancestors, subject to Indian raid and massacre, 

but today it merely sows the dragons' teeth in the fertile 



CULTURE DISCIPLINE AND DEMOCRACY 183 

imagination of boyhood. The fact that young children, in 
the fee-fi-fo-fum stage of human existence, are interested in 
bloodshed and in mortal conflict is no reason why they should 
be fed on folklore and myth which strengthen feelings and 
ideals hostile to modern civilization, but the strongest reason 
possible for either omitting such material altogether, or, 
where it takes the form of historic narrative essential to a 
realization of national or ancestral achievement, for associa- 
ting it with a cumulative impression of the horror and suffer- 
ing due to war. Longfellow's description of the exile of the 
Acadians after the burning of Grand Pre, Mary Wilkins 
Freeman's sensative but thrilling picture of the Deerfield 
massacre in 'Tatience," ''Logan's Lament," extracts from 
Stephen Crane's ''Red Badge of Courage," or Tolstoi's 
"Stebastapool," Sherman's letter to his wife from his first 
battlefield, should unite with the unforgetable lesson taught 
by the artist in "the Conquerors," with their inexorable and 
remorseless march over the victims of war, to make children 
realize, as strongly as wholesome imagination permits, that 
"war is hell." 

4. Necessity for the Further Exclusion and Continual Rejection 
of All That Is Not Useful to the Majority of Individuals 
Who Are Not Specialists 
So far as I know, W. H. Payne was the first to point out 
that Mr. Spencer, in his attempt to determine the relative 
worth of general branches of human knowledge taken as 
wholes, has failed to distinguish between what is directly or 
immediately useful to individuals in general, and what is 
"mediately" useful to the race through the specialist. ^"^ 
Although the distinction is a clear one and is continually 
responsible for elimination, courses of study and text-books 
are so largely the work of individual specialists that personal 
interest and enthusiasm serve to check its operation on the 
side of exclusion. Details are continually creeping in which 
ultimately have to be thrown out. In arithmetic, elimination 
from that point of view is fairly complete. Its operations 



l84 CULTURE DISCIPLINE AND DEMOCRACY 

and applications stand out so prominently that the first flush 
of criticism revealed those useful only to the few. But in the 
richer subject matter of science and history, where painstak- 
ing analysis is necessary to bring out specific relationships, 
elimination has been slower; while failure to safeguard the 
text-book through exclusion has meant the persistent influx 
of material which is judged available by the specialist, be- 
cause it is new to the science or has not yet been used in ele- 
mentary education, but which the test of direct usefulness to 
the majority must eventually reject. 

From the standpoint of the course of study in American 
high schools, an added evil has been the temptation of the 
college or university graduate to utilize the 
ofthe°*^^ specialized knowledge with which he is most 
specialist familiar, in the absence of the safeguards that can 
upon the come only with adequate pedagogical training, 

high school j i j re • ^ • • i, j. 

course. ^^^ close and eincient supervision by experts 

familiar with the educational problem and the 
local school system as wholes. Quite distinct from the so- 
called dominance of the high school by the college through 
uniform entrance requirements, though involved in it, is this 
indirect influence of the individual specialist who trains 
secondary school teachers in his specialty and writes text- 
books for secondary schools, from the viewpoint of the 
specialty alone. As Professor Hanus heard a well-known 
teacher express it, "An aim? I have no aim in teaching!"^^ 
While elementary text-books in high school and college 
are possibly the worst offenders, the common school subjects 
are not yet fully purged. An analytic examina- 
stilHn-°^^ tion of any one text in physiology shows that the 
eludes de- influx of useful hygienic material has been re- 
tails useful markable, but when the sum total of the newer 
specialists, texts and courses of study are considered, with 
rare exceptions it is seen that in any one the 
presence of anatomical and physiological technique, mainly 
useful through the skilled physician or surgeon, still excludes 
all but a fraction of the directly useful material which books 



CULTURE DISCIPLINE AND DEMOCRACY 185 

and courses collectively present. If minute anatomy, the 
detailed description of circulation, specific organic juices, 
O. Henry's remembrance of the shin bone as the largest bone 
in the human body, with happily vague recollections of glar- 
ing manikins and dissected ox eyes are not rejected on the 
ground that their usefulness is almost solely through the 
specialist, the application of the further test of useful many- 
sidedness and frequency of useful recurrence will cast them 
into outer darkness. 

The physiographical geography, which represents the swing 
of the pendulum from the equal extremes reached by the old 
geography of location, is also ripe for the pruning knife. It 
is important to the specialist to precisely define 
headland or cape, to determine whether Aus- too inclusive 
tralia is continent or island, to glibly refer to of physio- 
terminal moraine, intermittent spring and world s^^Pfj^^*^ 
ridge, take daily observations on the weather, and 
inquire into the local conditions modifying climate in Africa 
or South America, but with children and the adult who is 
not a specialist who by some chance continues to remember 
such a content, it interprets no ordinary experience and starts 
no associations thronging. It is not something to remember 
by and to think with. 

In history, the period is passed in which people might 
reasonably be expected to respond to the old sea captain's 
question in Doyle's "Rodney Stone," "How 
many ships of the line at the battle of Camper- tolfmnitary. 
down?" but it still has in many texts too military 
a caste. It is the cadets at Annapolis and West Point, not 
the ordinary schoolboy, who should show familiarity with 
such details of military campaigns as most pupils of twenty 
years ago have by this time forgotten. 

While, on the whole, elimination of specialized material 
forced upon one generation is likely to give way before the 
resentful common sense of the same generation grown old, 
the readiness with which it can be detected should prevent 
its further admission into the common school course. 



l86 CULTURE DISCIPLINE AND DEMOCRACY 

In the college the situation affords little help, so long as 
its component courses are so largely left in their details to 
The college ^^^ mercy of individual specialists. No ab solu- 
and uni- tism is greater than that exercised concerning 

versity ^lis specialty by the occupant of an academic 

course L wf m/ A 

dominated chair. When the details of subject matter are 
by the not determined by the formal nature of the 

speciahst. specialty itself, he can follow his own judgments 
and interests both in what he offers and in what he exacts, 
whether from the standpoint of advanced standing or as a 
condition to further advancement. The natural tendency 
is, therefore, to specialization within the specialty, often as 
hostile to its general mastery as to direct preparation for life. 
Here the only remedy is so authoritative a determination 
Determina- ^^ ^^^ relative worth of specific relationships or 
tion of rela- types of relationships composing the specialty, 
*l7^fi^°^^^ both from the standpoint of direct preparation 
remedy for ^^d of specialization, that the individual special- 
overspecial- ist is compelled to discriminate between the rela- 
ization. tively less useful and those of greater worth. 

What is hardest for him to comprehend is that the usefulness 
of details varies with the knowledge and experience of the 
learner, in proportion to the extent to which many-sidedness 
of relationship and frequency of recurrence is possible. 
Material that is of the greatest possible use to him in some 
phase of his work to which it is related in a hundred ways 
and in which it is continually recurring, may be, through the 
absence of such many-sidedness and recurrence, of little or 
no use in the specialty as a whole and of practically none 
whatever outside of it. 

In the last analysis, elimination, on the ground of only 
indirect or mediate usefulness, reduces itself to the rejection 
of relationships so low in relative many-sidedness and re- 
currence that their relative uselessness can be readily detected 
without exact comparison. 



CULTURE DISCIPLINE AND DEMOCRACY 187 

^. All Material Must Be Rejected Which is Being Effectively 
Taught Outside the School, or Which Cannot Be Effectively 
Taught in the School 

The rejection of material on the ground that it is being 
effectively taught outside the school or institution con- 
cerned, or that it cannot be effectively taught within the 
school, has been more frequently used to exclude relation- 
ships that the school ought to teach than those that it 
cannot. 

In general, it is safe to assert that since education is a 
continuing process and development continually going on, 
every institution wliich can exercise an educational function 
in the direction of any phase of the educational aim should 
exercise it. That is, regardless of the shifting responsibility 
that changing industrial, social, and political conditions have 
imposed throughout the history of civilization and will 
continue to impose, upon family, community, church, social 
classes, state or organized industry and philanthropy, each 
institution having the educational function must, in the way 
for which it is best fitted, concern itself with each phase of the 
educational aim. A particular institution may ^.^^.j^ gQ^.j^j 
cease to have any educational function at all, institution 
either because it fails to reach individuals during °^"^* iQ^ch. 
the period of formal instruction, or because they oJthe edu^- 
are given over to some other institution that can cational 
perform the same service more economically and **™* 
effectively. But so long as it controls some part of life for 
those who are to be taught, and can perform in a different 
way the same service that some other institution may be 
performing more completely and effectively, it must do its 
supplementary part. No phase of the educational aim will 
approach complete realization in the development of the 
great mass of individuals unless home, church and school 
co-operate with every other form of educational activity that 
touches the life of the learner to bring the greatest possible 
sum. total of instruction to bear. 



188 CULTURE DISCIPLINE AND DEMOCRACY 

This, however, does not mean that various social institu- 
tions responsible for education should teach the same details 

or the same relationships. The church, for ex- 
should not ample, must teach creed, and it is the very argu- 
teach the ment of continuity that leads the Roman Catho- 
ta£^ ^" ^^^ church to insist upon teaching it in home and 

school, and various other Christian denominations 
to resist the elimination of Christian literature and worship 
from the public school system. But, whatever be the out- 
come of the approaching political struggle from the standpoint 
of creed, whether or not the parochial school system is recog- 
nized by the state, and the public school system is secularized 
or Christianized, religion must be taught in school. The 
reverence for deity, obedience to divine law, and faith in pro- 
vidence essential to all religions are likely to be beaten down 
by the force of hostile elements in modern life, if the school, 
in its teaching of history and literature, fails to utilize the 
emotional record of deeds and examples that inspire men to 
worship. The church may exact the bowed head on passing 
the cathedral door, the bended knee before the image of a 
saint or imageless chancel rail, and teach the omniscience of 
God from catechism and psalter. The school can tell of 
Washington's praying alone in the snowdrifts at Valley 
Forge, of Lincoln's faith in divine providence throughout the 
Civil War, and the devotion of Father Breboeuf, or teach, 
with the added influence of song, Bryant's "Forest Hymn," 
Longfellow's "King Robert of Sicily" or "Sir Humphrey 
Gilbert." 

But there is no reason why home, church, and school 
should teach the same relationships or details. Dr. Hall's 
The school study of "Children's Minds on Entering School" 
has no has probably been as often used to justify the 

?°^^ii*d re teaching of what children already know as to 

tails well show the need of the Herbartian discovery and 
taught else- "preparation" of what is already in children's 
^ ®^®* minds to ensure the apperception of what is 

taught. Dr. John Dewey's analysis of the mental steps in- 



CULTURE DISCIPLINE AND DEMOCRACY 189 

volved in forming the number concept^^ has undoubtedly, 
here and there, led to laborious instruction intended to de- 
velop arithmetical generalizations made long before outside 
the school. Local geography of a sort that every book agent, 
owner of a motor car, or shipping clerk can and will get for 
himself, wastes time in the same way; drill in the use of city 
directories and telephone books comes in the same category. 
There is too much that the school must do, if it is not to re- 
main undone, to include what is well attended to outside — 
practical though such instruction may appear. It is from 
this point of view that Dr. Harris' old argument for the three 
R's is continually reaffirmed by citizens who look upon every 
new undertaking of the school as superfluity or ''fad." It 
is time for them to realize that, owing to the lessened educa- 
tional function of other institutions, the fact that, legally at 
least, it reaches every individual, and the increasing efficiency 
of its teaching force, the school must increasingly concern 
itself with the direct furtherance of vital ends to which the 
three R's themselves are but highly useful means and with 
which they must not conflict. 

This does not mean that the school must include in its 
course of instruction details of morality, citizenship, or what 
not which it cannot effectively teach, or that the r^^^ school 
home and other institutions should carry on a must not 

lessened task where they can substitute a different assume 

. I'll • • work which 

one. Courses m courtship, absurd as too imagi- it cannot 

native conceptions of their possible content may effectively 
be, have greater likelihood of efficiency with ^^^®* 
young women in the secondary school than the training in 
the care and nurture of children urged by Mr. Spencer, which 
should either be given by agencies outside the school to those 
who are normally interested as wives or mothers, or confined 
in the school to the ''little mothers" of nine or ten, who natu- 
rally graduate from doll nursing to the care of younger broth- 
ers and sisters. On the other hand, the mere fact that, owing 
to changing economic and social conditions, the home outside 
the farm can no longer give the boy the rigid training to 



I90 CULTURE DISCIPLINE AND DEMOCRACY 

industrial routine which formerly resulted from chopping 
kindling, pumping water, running errands, and going for the 
mail, is no reason why there cannot be substituted the more 
varied tasks, along the line of manipulation and repair which 
v>^ould be made possible by an adequate course in domestic 
science or training which a later chapter suggests for the 
school. 



CHAPTER VIII 

APPLICATION OF THE TEST OF RELATIVE WORTH FROM THE 
STANDPOINT OF ALL FORMAL SELF-ACTIVITY WHICH IS 
INDIRECTLY USEFUL 

After all, as is made clear enough at the start, principles 
of elimination can only reject the most obviously useless or 
harmful material. Elimination, as well as selection, must, 
for the most part, result from the determination of the rela- 
tive worth of specific relationships. The three principles in- 
volved must be successively applied from the standpoint of 
the five phases of formal self-activity, direct furtherance, 
and specialization. 

I. Application of the Test to Relationships Intended to Further 
Cumulative Impression 

The material most useful, from the standpoint of cumula- 
tive impression, is chiefly measured through the degree 
of resulting sensation or emotion. It is not it. Degree of 
but the relationship to which it is intended to sensation or 

give emotional force, whose usefulness depends f^°*l°.° 
.,,',. . ^ the chief 

upon many-sidedness and frequency of recurrence, measure of 

Yet where the emotional material itself is also cumulative 

many-sided or frequently recurring, as in the ^^^P^^^sion. 

case of a poem which illustrates many essential truths, or a 

painting which is constantly alluded to or reproduced, its 

own value is increased. 

It is from the standpoint of cumulative impression and 

mere remembrance alone that comparative worth does not 

ignore the greater readiness with which resulting sensation 

191 



192 CULTURE DISCIPLINE AND DEMOCRACY 

or emotion causes a relationship to be memorized or re- 
tained. The test for the inclusion of material in the es- 
sential content is relative usefulness, not relative ease of 
mastery. If relationships are useful enough to result in 
specific discipline, it will be assured through 
pres^ion" effective method. It does not matter how 
and re- readily acquired and persistent impressibility 

membrance j^^^y j^ake them, if it does not increase their 

furthered -. . ^ i i i i .7 

by impres- useiumess. On the other hand, optional content, 

sibility and w^holly dependent for initial retention on the 
of mastery ^^^^ remembrance to which it is a means, is 
more useful, if interest and impressiveness tend 
to hold .it in mind. Of course, the mere readiness of 
mastery, which works against interest and impressiveness, 
is useless even to mere remembrance. 

The form of sensational or emotional appeal which counts 
the most varies with the relationship that is to be made im- 
Form of pressive and must be adapted to it. Description 
emotional of emotional action, literature, eloquence, music, 
appeal must dramatic imitation, allusion, visual representa- 
to the^rela- ^^^^ through picture, model, or sculpture — some- 
tionship to times one and sometimes the other, but, so far 

be made ^^ possible, all must be brousfht to bear whenever 
impressive. ,,.'... ° ir. 

the relationship is important enough lor its emo- 
tional associations to be made sure. From among the forms 
that are possible those illustrations and examples must be 
selected which are not only in themselves emotional, but 
which are emotional in the highest degree and with the 
greatest many-sidedness and frequency of recurrence possible 
to each form, and which carry their sensation or emotion over 
to the thing to be emotionalized. 

Below the upper limit of useful emotion, however, the 
determining factor is the relative degree of emotional interest 
thus transferred. The many-sidedness of relationship and 
frequency of recurrence of General Grant, re-enforcing the 
degree of feeling aroused through the story of his prompt sub- 
mission to the game warden, makes it more likely to be re- 



CULTURE DISCIPLINE AND DEMOCRACY 193 

called, by American boys at least, and hence more likely to 
be retained as an active contributor to the wish to be obedient 
to law, while that of Prince Henry and the Chief Justice will 
similarly persist in the imagination of one familiar with Eng- 
lish history or Shakesperian drama. The emotional appeal 
being sufficiently high in the two cases in question for them to 
be unquestionably included from the emotional point of view 
alone, many-sidedness and recurrence become determining. 
An illustration less many-sided or recurring, but of equal 
emotional interest, would not be so useful. But if one inci- 
dent was of much greater emotional interest than the other, 
its emotional appeal would be determining, since in order to 
utilize it instruction can make it more permanent than inci- 
dental recurrence; where emotion should be high in degree 
as well as persistent through a cumulative sum total, degree 
is even still more determining. 

The mere concreting of an emotional idea or of a conception 
in which interest is to be aroused — a sword of Bunker Hill, a 
silver franc inscribed with the head of Louis the Sixteenth, 
a fragment of the Colliseum — all serve, in greater or lesser 
degree, like the button from a uniform or a lock of hair, to 
increase an emotion that already exists, even though an ob- 
ject or a fragment which, in the absence of association, is of 
little use or no interest. 

On the other hand, a humorous or pathetic story or an 
attractive object may in itself possess an interest or result in 
an emotion which actually distracts attention from the thing 
illustrated or exemplified. This is, of course, always true 
when the added interest is wholly in the illustration, as when 
children count some new and attractive objects without motive 
for interest in their number. It is, after all, the method of 
instruction and not merely the application of the test of 
emotional worth that ultimately determines whether the 
music of the minuet will make one think of dances quite out- 
side of histories and schools, or call to mind the fragrance of 
bayberry candles, the rustle of colonial poplins, the gleam of 
India brocades and powdered queues. 

13 



194 CULTURE DISCIPLINE AND DEMOCRACY 

Where cumulative impression has for its aim aesthetic 
judgment and appreciation, the enjoyment of the emo- 
Master- tional material is an end in itself, though, as 
pieces of art has been already urged, the masterpiece of 
most useful literature or of art is the more useful when it 
ther all " ^^so serves to strengthen an ideal or to give 
phases of added interest to what directly furthers not 
right living, culture alone, but industry, morality, or pa- 
triotism as well. 

While self-expression in the sense of skill, whether aesthetic 
or narrowly utilitarian, belongs to direct furtherance and 
specialization, the pleasure or self-satisfaction which accom- 
panies individual right activity not yet become habitual, or 
purposeful imitation of what is being made ideal, should be 
utilized as an important factor in cumulative impression. On 
propitious occasions it should be stimulated through congrat- 
ulation and applause to the emotional pitch of happiness in 
what has given pleasure to others and of wholesome pride in 
self-achievement. 

Finally, impression is re-enforced by the milder interest 
which arises from the ease of accomplishment that comes 
with right habit, and the similar feeling due to physiological 
readiness in apperception itself. On this side, interest is 
dependent upon recurring experience or method of instruction. 

But while interest can be thus developed by method in any 
relationship that is useful, and no relationship that is useless 
or harmful can be made useful through interest, it is none 
the less true that until cumulative impression is strong 
enough to make a useful idea sufficiently dominant to serve 
as the motive force for general discipline, the relative useful- 
ness of material which re-enforces it is largely determined 
by its relative degree of interest, feeling, or emotion. In 
ensuring cumulative impression it is the most emotional 
examples and illustrations that should be made certain 
through specific descipline, regardless of their many-sided- 
ness or recurrence, except where they are approximately 
equal in their emotional appeal. 



CULTURE DISCIPLINE AND DEMOCRACY 195 

2. Relative Worth from the Standpoint of Mere Remembrance 

Three distinctions are prerequisite to the application of the 
test for relative worth from the standpoint of mere remem- 
brance — the distinction between optional and essential rela- 
tionships, between ultimate and immediate usefulness, and 
between directly or specifically useful and generally or vari- 
ably useful material. Since an essential relationship is ulti- 
mately to be made certain through specific discipline, it 
belongs to mere remembrance as well only during the period 
in which it is held in mind as a partial concept through a rela- 
tionship which for the time being does not perform the further 
function of apperception. Until the name California begins 
to be cumulatively apperceived, it remains in the stage of 
mere remembrance, even though it is definitely held in mind 
by a whole primary school class through a common and 
specific association with orange-growing, in place of or in ad- 
dition to incidental or optional associations var3dng with the 
individual pupil. 

Whether optional or essential, the usefulness of a relation- 
ship is immediate, if it is likely to recur occasionally or to 
become a center for new associations before it is ^^ ^^^^ 
forgotten. In the case of the optional relation- mere re- 
ship not made certain through the formal repe- membrance 

. . T f • . J 1 • Optional 

titions of instruction, immediacy of interest being material 

necessary to attention and retention, conditions must be im- 
immediacy of usefulness. Its interest, however, ^gg^^^j*®^^ 
may spring from its many-sidedness rather than 
from inherent sensational or emotional appeal. In the case 
of the essential relationships, retained as partial concepts 
through repetition and review, immediacy of usefulness 
through many-sidedness and recurrence can be ignored only 
if so few essential relationships are immediately useful as to 
make the task of future memorizing too great through failure 
to utilize not only the time available for memorizing and 
review in the earlier stages of development, but the greater 
interest that children possess in mechanical memorizing, re- 



196 CULTURE DISCIPLINE AND DEMOCRACY 

collection, and remembrance before their interests are de- 
termined by a continually broadening mental content. 
For the purposes of mere remembrance, then, optional mate- 
rial must be immediately useful; that is, immediately many- 
sided or recurring and immediately interesting. But essen- 
tial material should possess a many-sidedness and recurrence 
partially immediate, unless the ultimate memorizing of the 
greatest possible sum total of essential relationships demands 
the utilization of all time effective for memorizing and 
review throughout the course, and hence of the immediate 
interest in memory work peculiar to the early school years. 
When the test is actually applied, however, an abundance of 
essential relationships will almost certainly be discovered 
whose many-sidedness and recurrence are partially immediate 
and capable of being taught through method that will ensure 
maximum interest. 

Now, it is highly important, both to useful apperception 
and general discipline, that each highly useful concept, as a 
J, .. J whole, should be given the greater permanence 
relation- and associative re-enforcement that comes with 
ships need the continuity possible through the early mastery 
tive force " ^ven of the mere word denoting a partial essential 
possible concept. If the concept is emotional, cumula- 
from early ^ive impression gradually comes to give it a dy- 
namic force that is irresistible. Even in the ab- 
sence of emotional associations, its persistent many-sidedness 
involves at each recall the general stirring of mental content, 
which Kiilpe says results in direct recognition, and which lies 
at the heart of Herbartian interest. The idea has become a 
part of life and of character in a sense that is impossible when 
it is not memorized until it can be fully understood. From 
the standpoint of mere remembrance it cannot too early 
begin its function of accumulating and holding in mind 
otherwise mere fugitive or less usefully related ideas in re- 
lationships that directly and permanently further the edu- 
cational aim. 

The function of the word denoting a partial essential con- 



CULTURE DISCIPLINE AND DEMOCRACY 197 

cept that is indirectly and generally useful, is to hold ideas in 
mind in relationships which may not in them- 
selves be directly useful, but which further a ^y^*?^.™' 
complete and variable apperception, and hence associations 
the mental interrelationship that assures inter- a means to 
communication between them and any field of byTfor op- 
knowledge and experience. From the standpoint tional rela- 
of mere remembrance, essential ideas, whether Jio^ships, 
directly or indirectly useful, being themselves cer- membered. 
tainly retained, use their cumulative many-sided- 
ness, recurrence, and consequent interest as means to remem- 
ber by. Optional relationships, on the other hand, use their 
immediate many-sidedness, recurrence, and interest as means 
to being themselves remembered — ^if by directly useful ideas, 
with the result of strengthening the dominance of some cen- 
tral relationship through the centripetal phase of appercep- 
tion; if by indirectly useful ideas, with the result of more 
completely interrelating all ideas and so indirectly ensuring 
through the centrifugal force of apperception, the more 
general application and dominance of the useful. Hence, 
the test for the selection of material useful for mere remem- 
brance concerns itself with essential relationships whether 
directly or indirectly useful, that are to be made certain as the 
means to the mere memorizing of others, and with optional 
relationships that are themselves to be remembered. The 
test for these three classes of ideas is in part identical. In 
the case of both essential and optional relationships, ultimate 
many-sidedness, frequency of recurrence, and degree of sensa- 
tional or emotional effect are determining for selection from 
the standpoint of the course of study as a whole, but the point 
in the course of study at which they shall be when par- 
first memorized is fixed for essential material by tial mas- 
the immediacy of merely occasional recurrence *®^y ^^?"^^ 
and very partial many-sidedness, which certainty by immedi- 
of retention will make cumulative; and for op- acyofuse- 
tional material by an immediacy of recurrence ^"^^®^^- 
and interest without which there is Httle apparent chance of 



198 CULTURE DISCIPLINE AND DEMOCRACY 

retention at all. Every idea presented to the mind, over and 
above what instruction can ensure, has some chance of being 
retained, and may constitute a connecting link in some series 
of associations whose new or exceptional usefulness no test for 
relative worth can anticipate. It is the task of instruction to 
make certain the retention of those whose direct or indirect 
usefulness in high degree can be foreseen, and to make as 
probable as possible the mere remembrance of those im- 
mediately many-sided and recurring enough to be retained, 
if they are even for but a little time held in mind. 

The importance of this initial memorizing or holding in 
mind is the justification of the usual attempt to get from the 
Discrimina- l^^^ner all that text-book and lecture have pre- 
tion in sented. That is, in the first recitation upon matter 

recitation once presented, the teacher is justified in his 
between es- ^ .. i 1 • m i 

sential and customary enort to see that his pupils or students 

optional re- are getting it all, if he will discriminate between 
la ions ps. ^j^g ideas which they must permanently retain 
in specific relationships and those which it will be useful for 
them to retain in any relationship at all. But each idea cho- 
sen from this material not made certain through recurring 
review, which is to be given the best chance of survival, must 
be recurring in some relationship or other in the immediate 
experience of the learners, and its chance of persistence is 
greatly increased if that relationship is an interesting one or 
if the material itself is inherently interesting through its 
sensational or emotional appeal. Many-sidedness is a test 
of only ultimate usefulness, unless it results in immediate 
interest or recurrence. 

3. Genetic Conditions Determining Only for Optional Material 

It is only from the viewpoint of cumulative impression, 
mere remembrance and hence varying apperception, and in 
the determination of the point in the course of study at which 
optional material shall be introduced, that readiness of 
mastery or immediacy of interest due to genetic conditions^ 



CULTURE DISCIPLINE AND DEMOCRACY 199 

"nascent period" or culture epoch, determine selection. 
Where relationships are not so many-sided, recurring or 
high in degree of permanently useful feeling or emotion as to 
be included in the essential content whose retention will be 
compelled, those which appeal to innate tendencies and in- 
herent interest limited to some stage of development or 
strongest at such a stage, have the greatest likelihood of 
mere remembrance. Given approximately equal worth 
from the standpoint of many-sidedness and recurrence, those 
relationships should be selected for impressive presentation 
at each period of advancement which have through interest 
the best chance of survival. Indeed, relationships relatively 
less recurring in themselves or through immediate many- 
sidedness, should be included on the strength of high degree 
of immediate interest, unless they exclude from effective 
presentation others whose many-sidedness and recurrence are 
immediate enough to ensure not only mere remembrance, but 
cumulative apperception. Of course, the brightly colored, 
the beautifully formed, the fragrant or what offends through 
its odor, things pleasant or repugnant to the taste or touch, 
whatever makes one laugh or weep, angry or ashamed, enjoy- 
able or unpleasant activities, are likely, for a time at least, 
to be held in mind, but even lengthy and meaningless words 
which are rhythmical or sonorous — the Constantinoples 
and Popocatapetls of childish vocabularies — tend to remain 
in the memory when more many-sided and even frequently 
recurring ideas, through lack of impressiveness, pass in one 
ear and out the other. Here remembrance is not left solely 
to chance. It is either made reasonably probable through 
the sensational or emotional appeal of the presentation as a 
whole to some tendency or capacity known to be in the mind, 
or made more readily possible through a many-sided pre- 
sentation in the hope of increasing the chance of association 
with a mental content that is either variable or unknown. 



200 CULTURE DISCIPLINE AND DEMOCRACY 

4. Words the Most Useful Material from the Standpoint of 
Mere Remembrance 

The material chiefly useful from the standpoint of mere 
remembrance is words. They are the symbols or counters 
by which otherwise fugitive experiences are individually held 
in memory, called to mind, and apperceived. Each word that 
is retained becomes a center for the retention of the idea or 
group of ideas for which it stands, for the words that express 
them, and for other words and ideas. Growth of vocabulary, 
therefore, no matter how partial the concept retained, is an 
index not only of mere remembrance, but of readiness of 
varying apperception, and hence of the possible range of 
general discipline. The ability to write words greatly in- 
creases the possibility though not the certainty of both mere 
remembrance and specific discipline. The habit of quickly 
jotting down expressions or ideas that otherwise stand little 
likelihood of being recalled, merely gives further opportunity 
for getting them in mind. When note-taking is regarded as 
„ . . , an end in itself, especially the taking of lecture 
ing ensures notes, it actually interferes with retention, 
mere re- whether partial or exact, by distracting attention 
mem ranee. ^^^^ ideas and breaking in on the continuity of 
discourse. Where the lecturer puts essential propositions 
into a syllabus that can be memorized, and note-taking con- 
cerns itself with otherwise evanescent ideas that will later 
become the objects of thought and reflection, the purpose 
of mere remembrance is better served. 

Of course, ability to write involves ability to spell, and has 
its usefulness conditioned by ability to read what is written. 
Furthermore, reading is in itself the most important means to 
multiplication of vocabulary and hence to mere remembrance, 
as well as to varying apperception and general discipline. 
Travel, conversation with well-educated or broadly expe- 
rienced people, attendance upon public lectures, all serve the 
same end. 

Ability to read and to write are general in their usefulness, 



CULTURE DISCIPLINE AND DEMOCRACY 201 

and must ultimately be acquired without regard to the rela- 
tive value of individual words. For them the relative many- 
sidedness and recurrence of words are determining only in the 
earlier stages of instruction where but a limited number of 
particular words can be formed or recognized. In the end, 
it is phonograms that must be sounded out and blended and 
sequences of letters that must be as frequently recurring and 
many-sided as thought itself. SpelUng, too, must finally 
involve the ability to perceive and to write any word phonet- 
ically and the habit of observing phonetic exceptions in all 
new words that are remembered. In so far as the spelling 
work of the school aims to ensure the correct writing of spe- 
cific lists of words and to make necessary the selection of 
particular words to be drilled upon, spelling belongs to the 
essential rather than the optional content of mere The test for 
remembrance. But, both in specific spelling and relative 
where particular words in word-study and dis- ^^l^ ttfthe 
cussion are to be presented to the learner in the selection of 
hope of mere remembrance through some inci- |!°*^ essen- 
dental and individual relationship, the principles tional spell- 
of selection hold. It is here that the multiplicity ing words, 
of words connected with regular school work and supple- 
mentary reading can be drawn upon, not for spelling drill and 
review reserved for those most essential, but to be held in 
memory as wholes until they come under the operation of the 
habits necessary to the spelling of words not drilled upon in 
school. The words, whether to be memorized as wholes or 
both memorized and spelled, must be more or less many-sided 
and occasionally recurring, but as distinct from those whose 
mere remembrance in some partial relationship is essential 
to direct preparation, need not be certainly useful. Where 
they are equally many-sided or recurring, the degree of im- 
mediate feeling or emotion inherent in them or due to a rela- 
tionship with other ideas, which is made conspicuous in pre- 
sentation, is determining. Foreign products in geography 
that can be related to some familiar use to which they are 
put, words in a foreign vocabulary that are in themselves 



202 CULTURE DISCIPLINE AND DEMOCRACY 

beautiful or occur in the titles of familiar masterpieces 
of music, literature or art, should be selected in preference 
to those equally many-sided and recurring, but not equally 
likely to be retained through feehng. The manysidedness 
may be more or less remote, and make possible the grad- 
ual broadening of concepts as the years go by. Recur- 
rence, too, need not be immediate in determining the selec- 
tion of words that are to form a part of content in general 
without regard to the stage of development at which they are 
introduced, but in determining their place in the course of 
study, recurrence must be immediate or mere remembrance 
cannot be depended upon to continue to hold them in mind. 

It is especially useful, for example, to utilize the interest 
which a boy has in things warlike, to present to him through 
reading and story such military terms as will be used in his 
history before the end of the term or the school year. 

While words and ideas so high in their relative usefulness 
that they should be certainly remembered as early as possible 
though in a partial relationship, are, through the definiteness 
of that relationship, a phase of specific discipline, they are 
none the less a means to mere remembrance. From this 
point of view, their ultimate many-sidedness or recurrence 
must, of course, be of the highest and partially immediate, 
whether direct or indirect in its usefulness. 

On the side of both direct and indirect usefulness, invalu- 
able assistance is given to mere remembrance, and hence 
General ^o varying apperception and general discipline, 
ideas and by definitely fixing ideas in classes through general 
foricaf and* similarity in use or meaning, and general associa- 
geograph- tion in historic periods and geographical locaHty. 
ical loca- xhe same function is served in part by arti- 

sequences ficial mnemonic systems, but without the invalu- 
as memory- able furtherance of varying apperception and 
centers. general discipline which will be fully illustrated 
in discussing the application of the test for selection to the 
former. What is certainly held in mind is not only for the 
sake of having something to remember by, but to think with. 



CULTURE DISCIPLINE AND DEMOCRACY 203 

From this standpoint of apperception, association with the 
general idea or logical group is direct, and, while ensuring 
rational recall, does not necessarily tend to more many-sided 
reassociation and apperception. The place of the new idea is 
fixed and further attention may not be directed to it. Associ- 
ation in general geographical or historical location, however, 
leaves the idea in close mental juxtaposition with a great 
variety of others, with any one of which it may have some- 
thing in common. 

From the standpoint of remembrance, the advantage lies 
with the general idea or logical group. Where a name as a 
memory center makes similarity or partial iden- 
tity conspicuous, the cause of its efiiciency for i^ea tends^ 
mere remembrance is apparent. Every idea in to aid mere 
the group to which it applies being partly identi- remem- 
cal with every other, the memorizing of any one ^lone. 
means the partial memorizing of all ; if the learner 
is conscious of the similarity, classification or association with 
the memory center must result from such consciousness. 
The new word has as part of its form or meaning something 
that is already known which puts it into association by sim- 
ilarity not only with the general term, but with every other 
subordinate word in a well-remembered group. It also 
possesses as an added means to remembrance the associa- 
tion through contiguity in the mind, and perhaps objectively 
in time and space, upon which words not associated with 
general ideas are solely dependent for remembrance and 
recall. 

At first thought it seems likely that the words and rela- 
tionships most useful in this general way are taught through 
daily experience; that they are known to all just j^^ general 
because they are many-sided, recurring, and more words most 

or less interesting. But sharp distinction must useful as 

1 1 • 11 memory 

be made between words that contmually recur centers may 

because experience compels them, and ideas that fail to be 

would continually recur in experience if they were j^c^enta^ 

once associated v/ith the words by which they experience. 



204 CULTURE DISCIPLINE AND DEMOCRACY 

could be identified and recalled. This distinction is 
readily apparent in the case of directly useful ideas. 
Here instruction, constantly supplementing experience, 
adds such general terms as prophylactic treatment, germs 
and germicide, food adulteration, and antiseptic to sick- 
ness, pain, food, and medicine already in the vocabulary of 
every-day life, but little more frequently recurring and often 
enough less useful than the terms which instruction makes 
equally sure. In the case of indirectly useful words, however, 
instruction has been as incidental as experience itself. Care- 
ful determination should be made of the relatively few terms 
indirectly and generally so useful to all from the standpoint 
of mere remembrance and varying apperception, that they 
should be certainly memorized in the most useful relation- 
ship which will hold them fast, but, if necessary, in a rela- 
tionship which in itself is not useful at all. They will be 
chosen mainly from among the names of branches of human 
knowledge, general terms of science, departments of literature, 
activities of mind or body, etymological roots, geographical 
localities, and historical periods or epochs. 

The memory centers most useful in direct furtherance of 
the aim, and, therefore, the earliest that should be memor- 
ized for its indirect furtherance through remem- 
The words j^j-g^j^^^^g ^^^^ apperception will be determined by 
indirectly applying the usual principles of selection to 
most use- the subject matter directly useful to religion, 
ory^centeS' ^norality, health, general industry, social service, 
citizenship, and avocation. Similar application 
must also be made to the subject matter of the academic 
branches. The application of the test in the determination 
of the general ideas most useful as memory centers in only 
indirect furtherance of the aim can be best illustrated at this 
point. Many of them, of course, become familiar outside the 
school-room. Man, woman, food, clothing, house, home, 
work, play, tree, plant, flowers, fruits, animal, bird, fish, insect, 
stone, book, good, bad, and many other general terms, each 
of which includes a multitude of partially identical or similar 



CULTURE DISCIPLINE AND DEMOCRACY 205 

particulars, furnish the chief means by which we remember 
new words and ideas. Botany, as the science of plants, zo- 
ology of animals, and mineralogy of minerals, as well as 
history as the story of the past, and geography of the home 
of man, are immediate in recurrence and many-sidedness to 
children in the primary school. Biology, as the science of 
life and growth, psychology of the mind, chemistry of changes 
that show what things are made of, and physics of all changes 
that do not, have their immediacy of many-sidedness, recur- 
rence, and interest a little further along in the course of study. 
Terms gained from anthropology, and philology and from 
such formal subjects as grammar, algebra, and the higher 
mathematics, are not useful for remembering words falling 
within the experience of children; nor do they contribute 
many memory centers for college graduates. While psy- 
chology is not related to experiences of which young children 
are incidentally conscious, it can as a general term readily be 
associated with a few frequently recurring experiences such 
as sensation, feeling, association, apperception and habit, 
of which they should be made conscious in order that they 
can more readily further their own development. Other 
examples of names standing for general ideas highly useful, 
not only to mere remembrance of names and experiences, 
but to logical classification, are analysis, oxidation, alterna- 
tive, alumnus, author, avocation, solution, adulteration, 
fiction, travel, encyclopedia, agriculture, autobiography, 
science, anonymous, and exploration. While, as compared 
with each other, they vary greatly in recurrence, many-sided- 
ness, and interest, and in the immediacy of each, they are 
readily distinguishable in relative usefulness from the great 
mass of words from which they are selected. 

Of the eight or more thousand words in Webster's una- 
bridged dictionary beginning with *'a," only about a hundred 
not found in the every-day vocabulary of the mass of people 
appear on superficial examination to contrast sharply with 
the remainder in relative direct and indirect usefulness. 
Of these, fifteen or more, such as abasement, abbrevia- 



2o6 CULTURE DISCIPLINE AND DEMOCRACY 

tion, abode, and abridgment, are loosely synonymous with 

words in the commonest use. Of the remainder, about 

twenty, while frequently recurring, aid but little, 

e re a- through many-sidedness, in remembering other 

number of words or ideas. On this ground, the memorizing 

words use- of such words as abatement, abdomen, abettor, 
ful as mem- ■, i j. • j i j i r i 

cry centers. 2,beyance, abortion, and absconder may be safely 

left to optional content. Approximately, fifty 
words from the eight thousand, that cannot safely be left to 
ordinary experience, stand out more or less prominently as 
those useful in remembering others. As they are either in- 
cluded in the tests already given, or will be fully represented 
in those that are to follow, they have been referred to at this 
point only as a rough indication of their probable proportion 
when more accurately determined. The association of gen- 
eral terms thus highly useful with the branches of knowledge 
to which they belong is not only an aid to memory, but the 
first step in the building up of system. In this manner, solu- 
tion and analysis can be associated with physics; analysis and 
oxidation with chemistry; and author, fiction, travel, auto- 
biography, and anonymous with literature. The useful 
system thus embryotically begun, as it cumulatively results 
from the application of the test of relative worth, should be 
the main end of instruction, and with its knowledge and 
activities fixed in their most useful interrelationships and 
subordinations, ultimately come to include all that education 
can bring to bear upon life. 

The systematic classification of words, through association, 
with the parts of speech and consequent organization through 
Grammat- grammatical relationships, at first thought better 
ical classi- fitted for furthering the memorizing of words than 

ficationand ^Yie System peculiar to any other branch, is on 

number , . 

useless for investigation found to be valueless. The use 

mere re- and meaning of words determines and suggests 

mem ranee, their grammatical classifications, rather than 

grammatical classification the meaning and use of words. 

Grammatical classification, however, to a limited extent in 



CULTURE DISCIPLINE AND DEMOCRACY 207 

English, and in high degree in an inflected language, deter- 
mines and hence recalls the form of words. This aids mem- 
ory in determining the correct form in which words are to be 
put to use. Furthermore, the resulting grammatical lan- 
guage or correctness of. speech is highly useful in direct 
furtherance of all phases of life, especially the cultural and 
social. One is little likely to remember a word, however, by 
the fact that when used as an adverb it ends in "ly," or that 
it expresses "action, being, or state of being." This is merely 
a concrete w^ay of saying that a very general term is little 
likely to suggest an especial particular, unless at a stage of 
its mastery when but few particulars are known. "Chem- 
istry" may readily suggest the few chemical terms known to 
children, but "verb" or "noun" applies to almost their whole 
vocabulary. When the grammatical group is less inclusive, 
as in the case of pronouns or conjunctions, before the par- 
ticulars are classified under a common name they are for the 
most part too familiar to need remembering. Number, also, 
is too general to aid mere remembrance, except where, in 
place of applying to varying combinations of units, as three 
dollars, fifty persons, or a hundred pear trees, it suggests such 
fixed and definite numerical combinations as triangles, fifty- 
cent pieces or centuries. 

While grammatical classification is negligible as an aid 
to mere remembrance, except the remembrance of grammat- 
ical distinctions themselves, etymological group- 
ing, through its association of identical forms and • *^,™° °?' 

o' o ^ ^ . icai group- 

meanings, is of the highest value. This does ing of high 

not justify the revival of the old time etymology value for 

of the grammar school with its effort exhaust- France." 

ively to present the English derivatives of Latin 

or Greek roots, regardless of their relative usefulness, but 

rather the certain memorizing in each school grade or each 

stage of development, of the roots whose many-sidedness and 

recurrence are sufficiently immediate to be useful to mere 

remembrance. Roots w^hich frequently recur in useful 



2o8 CULTURE DISCIPLINE AND DEMOCRACY 

English words not only serve to recall the words themselves, 
but their meanings as well. 

Distinction must be made between etymological roots, as 
memory centers for words and as a means to remembering 
their spelling. The modifications in the form of words, due 
to the growth of a language, often make etymology a false 
guide to spelling. The difficulty is easily met so far as the 
mastery of specific word lists in school is concerned, by in- 
cluding among etymological groups of words to be spelled 
only those which etymological analogy will aid. 

Outside of etymology, which itself suggests meaning, and 
the general ideas and logical groups with which association 
N m f ^^^ ^^^y gives a likelihood of mere remembrance, 
general ge- but of thought and intelligence as well, the most 
ographical useful memory centers are the names of general 
andhistor- geographical localities and historical periods, 
icai periods The extent to which they approach the exact and 

as memory ^^le particular is determined solely by the extent 
centers. 

to which the experience of learners includes de- 
tails that can be usefully remembered by them. That is, 
it is determined by the immediate many-sidedness and 
recurrence of particular exact locations. The child in the 
first grade, as soon as he begins to learn facts about 
the past, should at least have given him ancient times 
as *' long, long ago," and the periods of discovery, settlement, 
the Revolution, and the Civil War, as he begins to have ideas 
which can be centered about them. A little farther along, the 
names of the kings and queens of England, from Henry VII 
down, and of the presidents of the United States will be 
highly useful. Only the specialist in American history need 
associate events with particular years or even decades, be- 
cause, for all who are not specialists, the more general periods 
are ample to remember by and think with. Only the Egypt- 
ologist needs the names of the Egyptian dynasties or the 
classical specialist of minor Roman emperors. For the 
ordinary learner, they are names that must themselves be 
remembered, rather than means to remembering others. 



CULTURE DISCIPLINE AND DEMOCRACY 209 

So with the names of towns and cities. Of the twenty given 
in the dictionary under "a," probably from the fact that 
frequency of recurrence figured in their inclusion, almost all 
are needed by the great mass of learners — Africa, Alabama, 
Alaska, Alexandria, Algiers, Allegheny, Alps, America, 
Atlantic, Armenia, Arizona, Arkansas, Appalachian, Arabia, 
Asia, Austria, Australia, and Athens. The remainder, 
Albany, Atlanta, and Atlas, together with the thousands of 
other names that the gazeteer or atlas would associate with 
grand division, country, or state, are not memory centers so 
highly useful to ordinary learners that they must be very early 
fixed in mind, but rather to be remembered by association 
with centers that are. For Europeans, Albany is useful only 
as a city in America; for Americans, and even for most New 
Yorkers, as the capital of New York and on the Hudson; 
outside of its inhabitants and immediate neighbors, a few 
politicians, business men, or postal clerks, may find its associ- 
ation wdth a county worth while ; for primary school scholars 
!it has little use at all. Atlanta or the Atlas Mountains do 
not bring into even a cultured mind such a rush of ideas that 
they must be fixed in memory as centers to remember by. 
^ In the first school grade, Africa, America, Alaska, Arabia, 
" Asia, Atlantic, and Australia are ail more immediate in their 
'many-sidedness and recurrence than island, volcano, penin- 
■ijsula, and other physiographical concepts, taught because they 
Pi are simpler, and each one of them can be presented in rela- 
^tionships more immediately interesting. As great memory 
centers they will surely hold in mind, and be held in mind by 
gorillas and ivory; the country in which we live, and in which 
:an be located dozens of familiar names of tow^ns, rivers, 
i-iimountains, and states; miners and reindeer teams; deserts 
and coffee-berries; Chinese children, chopsticks and little 
shoes; ships, fish and shells; and Bushmen, sheep, and kanga- 
roos. Why should they be displaced for the few anemic germs 
of scientific truth that can be associated with smoking craters 
and water-encircled land, even though modeled in sand or 
identified in rain puddle and lantern slide? It is neither the 

14 



2IO CULTURE DISCIPLINE AND DEMOCRACY 

world as a whole nor local geographical units which best 
stand the test, but the parts which, whether large or small, 
near or remote, serve as memory centers for most ideas and 
names. 

When such general historical periods or geographical loca- 
tions are associated in their necessary juxtapositions and se- 
Artificial quences, the facts remembered by them are not 
memory only retained in relationships that are permanent, 
t^^*Tin ^^^ useful apperception is assured through the 
ideas in detection of resemblances otherwise unlooked for 
their most between them and other ideas thereby brought 
permanent ^^^^ mental contiguity with them. In such arti- 
relation- ficial mnemonic systems as that of Loisette this 
ships. furtherance of logical and essential association is 

lacking. When, however, Hiawatha and Robinson Crusoe 
are selected by the Herbartians as the basis of association for 
the entire work of a school term, the natural interests of 
children are admirably utilized from the standpoint of mere 
remembrance, but from that of apperception, so far as the 
story itself is the basis for recall, ideas are placed in relation- 
ships that are temporary, incidental, and of small potential 
usefulness compared with those discoverable by instruction 
unhampered by the boundaries of a petty isle or the atavistic 
limitations of a primitive life. Rather, partial concepts of 
factories and mills, of steamboat lines and railroad systems, 
of Mediterraneans and Great Britains, than ''simpler" and 
never fully comprehended ideas of goat-skin capes, canoes, 
and stockades are the germs from which complex modern life 
and civilization will most surely and rapidly grow. Here is 
the same alternative that confronts the teacher before chil- 
dren enter the primary school — the usefully prophetic plays 
of the kindergarten, or the more "natural" plays made inter- 
esting through the biological survival of prehistoric hunts and 
ceremonials. 

All words used as memory centers or remembered by 
them need not be read, spelled, or written. Until words 
can be readily sounded out, those used in the reading 



CULTURE DISCIPLINE AND DEMOCRACY 211 

lesson should, for the most part, be familiar to Much read- 
children and lend themselves to phonetic drill, to^remem- 
for phonetic reading removes all limits to the brance, 
expansion of vocabulary. From the stand- t^^o^s^ 
point of both mere remembrance and many-sided- 
ness, much reading is more important than the reading of 
what develops aesthetic taste. Crude stories that interest 
children should not be excluded from public and school 
libraries for lack of literary tone, if, through dealing with 
various occupations, industries, periods and environments, 
they tend to broaden juvenile interests and vocabularies. 
The books that should be inexorably excluded are those which 
by juvenilizing literature and "simplifying" language in an 
absurd syllabic sense, prevent the addition of new words to 
the eager and word-hungry memory with which childhood is 
blessed. School readers, used in class instruction and for 
oral reading, however, should not be informational. Aside 
from the aid given by the aesthetic, and especially the emo- 
tional and dramatic content of good literature, to expressive 
reading, conversation, and eloquent speech, the vocabulary 
of culture cannot be too early acquired. 

Apart from a more or less general prejudice against pho- 
netic reading, on the ground that it is antagonistic to correct 
spelling, the greatest obstacle in the way of rapid specific 
vocabulary expansion is insistence upon the spell- spelling drill 
ing and more or less exact definition of every word ^.^^."^^ ^® 
that happens to be included in a reading lesson, words com- 
Specific spelling drill, including the repeated moninordi- 
writing of particular words, should be limited to °^^ wntmg. 
those that immediately and more or less frequently recur in 
the type of writing peculiar to each stage of development. 
The words whose spelling should be thus made sure are the 
ordinary verbs, adjectives, adverbs, pronouns, and connect- 
ives, but include among nouns, only those that are com- 
monly written by all who write at all. Dr. Chancellor has 
probably come closest to a correct list by basing his selection 
upon frequency of recurrence in the daily papers,^ though 



212 CULTURE DISCIPLINE AND DEMOCRACY 

many words frequently recur there that ordinary individuals 
will not have to write. Without regard to the prevention 
of interference with vocabulary expansion through school 
reading, if pupils are to leave the elementary grades ''good 
spellers" of the words they will continually have to write in 
business and social correspondence, the number of words 
selected for specific drill must be so limited that continual 
review will be possible. Perhaps experimentation may prove 
that Cleveland has been too parsimonious, with its two or 
three new spelling words a day, but the result has been better 
spellers.^'' Memory centers for words as wholes may be of 
use, at this point, to spelling as well as to oral vocabulary, 
through holding words long enough in mind, during the period 
of initial memorizing of their spelling, for the spelling to be 
repeated until retained. If the word, as a whole, is forgotten 
as soon as the lesson is over, the time used for drilling upon 
its spelling is wasted. This holding of the words themselves 
in mind is the only justification for grouping words in spellers, 
as names of flowers, household utensils, and so on. If it is 
limited to the period of initial memorizing, it need not inter- 
fere with the gradual formulation of cumulative lists of words 
similar only in their spelling. Where, as in the case of ety- 
mological grouping, vv^ords are similar in meaning as well as 
in spelling, both intitial spelling and its retention are fur- 
thered. 

The worst type of speUing list, though one of the most 
popular, on the plea of adaptation to local and immediate 
needs, includes the words most often misspelled from the 
readers and other text-books in local use, without regard to 
the frequency with w^hich they will be ordinarily used outside 
of written recitations or examinations. Specific spelling- 
drill on words brought into a particular school-book through 
the taste of an individual author or the necessity of a single 
description or narrative, not only prevents adequate drill on 
more useful words, but miscellaneous words multiply too rap- 
idly to be persistently reviewed. They should not be repeat- 
edly spelled, but should be incidentally used for developing 



CULTURE DISCIPLINE AND DEMOCRACY 213 

the habit of observing the spelling of ail new words, through 

unconsciously sounding them over to one's self and noting 

phonetic exceptions. 

The mastery of a foreign language, duplicating as it does 

the vocabulary of the vernacular, develops few centers useful 

to remembrance. A foreign vocabulary is not Mastery of 

something to remember by, but something to be foreign 

remembered. Its value is from the standpoint languages 
. . ,. .^,..,. , affords ht- 

of varying apperception, specmc discipline, and tie aid to 

direct usefulness. On the other hand, for most remem- 

college graduates who are not specialists, as the ''^*^^®- 

years go by and specific systems of thought are forgotten, the 

part of the college course which does not cluster as impression 

about ideals and principles, has been mainly serviceable 

through mere remembrance and the individual and varying 

apperception which it makes possible. 

5. Application of the Test for Selection to Varying Apperception 
If apperception were to be confined to the incidental 
association and reassociation of ideas common to ordinary 
experience, the selection of material favorable to mere remem- 
brance would be fully adequate for apperception as well. 
To fix certainly in mind the most many-sided and frequently 
recurring ideas, both directly and indirectly useful, and, with 
the aid of effective method, to bring consistently to bear upon 
them and the multitude of other memory centers made certain 
by individual experience, the ideas which have been selected 
on account of their useful many-sidedness, recurrence, and 
interest, is to ensure a many-sided and useful apperception, 
but not the most many-sided and the most useful. If ap- 
perception is to be made either directly or indirectly useful 
in the highest degree, individual memory centers 

must be certainly associated together in interre- Systems of 

. memory 

lated groups and subdivisions. The individual centers 

memory centers may be numerous enough or necessary 

general enough to reach out after, and for a time *° IflJl^^ 
an ', , appercep- 

retain, any idea presented to the mind, but, if they tion. 



214 CULTURE DISCIPLINE AND DEMOCRACY 

are not memorized in groups which the usual test of relative 
worth has shown to be highly many-sided and recurring, 
varying apperception will ensure neither the cumulative 
many-sidedness, which makes the useful idea potent, through 
general discipline, nor the complete system of mental inter- 
connection essential to the greatest possible variation, and, 
therefore, to the most general application. 

That is, both the direct and indirect usefulness of varying 
apperception are dependent upon specific discipline — in the 

sense of system, as well as through the certain 
Only ^^2^- and definite association of each individual idea, 
recurring The groupings and the systems directly useful 
groups aid in the highest degree will be determined for each 
perception." P^ase of the aim from the standpoint of specific 

discipline, and will include all academic or formal 
groups and systems that are directly useful enough to be cer- 
tainly memorized. But, while all directly useful groups that 
are useful to varying apperception will be included, from the 
standpoint of the special phases, ail directly useful to the 
various phases will not necessarily be useful to varying apper- 
ception and serve to make varying apperception directly use- 
ful. Such a group of ideas, as the association of the name of 
Lincoln with humor, human sympathy, faith in God, the 
presidency of the United States, the Civil War, and the 
emancipation of slaves, is both ethically and politically useful 
and furthers useful apperception. But the association of 
Meade, Pennsylvania Reserves, Pickett's charge, and the 
Peach Orchard with Gettysburg is useful to citizenship with- 
out being helpful to apperception. The component ideas 
in this latter group should be recalled as long as Gettysburg 
continues to be an illustrious example of American courage 
and endurance, and hence a highly useful factor in cumulative 
impression; but, neither singly nor as a group, are they many- 
sided enough to the ordinary individual to have been memor- 
ized from the standpoint of varying apperception alone. 
They constitute a group that is to be remembered, not one to 
think with or even to remember by. 



CULTURE DISCIPLINE AND DEMOCRACY 215 

Most of the outlines that learners are compelled to plan, 
record, and even to memorize, as a condition to further ad- 
vancement at every stage of their educational ^, . _ 
progress, are useless either for direct furtherance fulness of 
or varying apperception. A detailed outline of memorizing 
the life and work of a particular author, the in- neither 
dustrial resources and political and social condi- many-sided 

tions of a particular country, the events in even a "°^ recur- 

.1. -11 • ring, 

great military campaign, expend the memory m 

place of assisting it, and tend to develop unimaginative indi- 
viduals, who can think only by recalling the concrete thing 
which they have thought out before. Put to the test for 
relative value, its restricted usefulness is immediately ap- 
parent. Even though it may be inherently interesting, it is 
neither many-sided nor recurring. 

The ideas that are directly useful within each academic 
subject must be grouped, both for direct and for indirect 
usefulness, into sequences and systems that are both many- 
sided and frequently recurring. Within most branches rich 
in content, not only citizenship, health, or morality, but vary- 
ing apperception both in the sense of concentration and of 
interconnection may be furthered by directly useful groups 
formed from ideas directly useful. In all but the abstract 
subjects, interconnection is furthered by the system peculiar 
to the branch of knowledge itself, in proportion as its com- 
ponent groups are many-sided and recurring whether they are 
directly useful or not. Even in specialization with its group- 
ing and organization of details without regard to their direct 
usefulness or to varying apperception, the test of many-sided- 
ness and recurrence is still determining and varying apper- 
ception may be furthered without the branch as well as 
within it. 

These general systems with their subordinate groupings, 
while in themselves constituting separate and individual 
apperception centers of high value, multiply both their 
centripetal and centrifugal power, if they are combined 
and interrelated. When their interrelationship is based 



2l6 CULTURE DISCIPLINE AND DEMOCRACY 

solely on the systems peculiar to various branches of learn- 
ing, phases of direct preparation for life and specializa- 
Oniy direct ^^^^ ^^ occupation or knowledge, appercep- 
preparation tion takes the form of specific and general 
deserves discipline, and gradually results in the domin- 
thr^ugh^*^^ ance of fixed ideas and habits. Through them 
cumulative the old idea or experience needs to be always 
tion^^^' apperceived in the same relationships, and the 
new one to be promptly subordinated in some 
Hmited ' 'circle of thought." In general education such 
dominance is essential only to the directly useful appercep- 
tive groups and systems. Religion and morality, health, 
industrial efficiency, social service, good citizenship, and 
right avocation, themselves usefully interrelated, must, so 
far as possible, regulate and control human existence. To 
them, from the standpoint of centripetal apperception, 
academic and specialized systems must be subordinated. 
Their selection is the most important service to which 
the test of relative usefulness is put. Their many-sided- 
ness, recurrence, and sensational and emotional appeal, 
potentially the highest, must be made actual through in- 
struction and experience. 

But, aside from their direct usefulness, they combine, 
with academic organization and all other possibly useful re- 
Correlation lationships, to ensure, on the one hand, their own 
between varying apperception, and, on the other, the means 
academic to the interrelationship of every idea and experi- 
i^n^dequate ^^^^ ^^'^^^ ^^Y other. To this end, the ordinary 
for useful and incidental appHcation of Herbartian correla- 
appercep- ^^q^^ ^^^ |.]^g g^g formal steps is too specific, and, 
therefore, limited, a means. However numerous 
the specific relationships formed between various branches of 
human knowledge, and ensured through preparation, pre- 
sentation, and the other apperceiving activities to each useful 
idea presented in a recitation, the vast multitude of inter- 
relationships possible to experience are but slightly furthered. 
Still less is their probability increased if the associations and 



CULTURE DISCIPLINE AND DEMOCRACY 217 

correlations are artificial and temporary — music associated 
with nature study by calling the bar a fence, and the notes 
of the scale do-birds and re-birds, or ail the elementary 
branches with each other, by making Mary's Little Lamb 
the correlating basis of a day's round, or the story of Crusoe 
the general apperceiving system for a term. 

With the exception of the great systems of ideas cumu- 
latively developed from the standpoint of direct usefulness, 
the mxost many-sided and frequently recurring General 
systems of interrelationships, and hence the most location, 
effective basis for complete and varying apper- ^nTphases 
ception, are not far-fetched associations between of personal 
formal subjects, but the more general phases experience 
of personal experience, together with historically ^gefui ap- 
related periods, reigns and epochs, and geograph- perception 
ically related localities, features, and sections, centers. 
Their value to apperception lies in the fact that, when 
an idea is associated with them, it is put into mental juxta- 
position, with a multitude of others with which it is almost 
certainly seen to have something in common which would 
otherwise remain undiscovered. While the interrelated sys- 
tems of directly useful appercei\ing centers limit and control 
apperception, those of general experience and geographical 
and historical location and sequence open the way to an 
apperception as variable as human life itself. More than 
this, inclusion in particular historical and geographical envi- 
ronments, and even in particular phases of personal experi- 
ence, is very likely to be based upon essential similarities 
which juxtaposition makes it easier to discover. If early 
in life, however, every-day experience and historical and geo- 
graphical systems come through instruction to include cer- 
tainly w^hat is consciously associated with direct furtherance, 
a multitude of ideas which they generally locate and retain 
are given higher probability of becoming directly useful as 
well as of being miscellaneously apperceived. In these larger 
interrelationships many-sidedness and recurrence are deter- 
mining, and result in an interest of their own. The general 



2l8 CULTURE DISCIPLINE AND DEMOCRACY 

conditions essential to a manufacturing center, the ideas com- 
mon to a geographical description of any country or of any 
staple of commerce; the general sequence or classification of 
events in colonization, war, or epochs, reigns and administra- 
tions; the various branches of literature as parts of literature 
in general, the association of the names of authors with the 
branch to which they belong and the books that they have 
written, the classification of facts common to the life and 
work of all authors; sequences of essentially related facts and 
principles in science; these are groups many-sided and 
recurring enough both to remember by and think with. 
They will be committed to memory not as directly furthering 
the aim, but as constituting means by which ideas will be 
interconnected and apperceived. 

In the determination of the apperceiving centers most 
useful for each stage of development, immediacy of sensa- 
tional and emotional appeal, as well as of many-sidedness and 
recurrence, must be taken into account. But at every stage, 
immediacy of many-sidedness and recurrence are determin- 
ing. 

Individual personal experience is not organized through 
instruction, but organizes itself, except in so far as it increas- 
Instruction ^^gly comes to be dominated by direct further- 
must select ance. But instruction must at each stage of 
the personal development select the phases of experience to 
to which it which a man3^-sided optional content is to be 
relates presented. That is, instruction determines the 

content. parts of systematic experience that are to be 
formally utilized as centers for varying apperception. If the 
fern is not presented in the more many-sided group of trees, 
flowers, and plants, with their suggestion of growth, decay, 
the need of proper care and a constantly increasing number 
of other ideas, the young child, if it retains it and apperceives 
it at all, may think of the less many-sided and suggestive 
"pot of green feathers." The nutmegs in the shop windows 
may be "white peanuts," if they are not given a far greater 
likelihood of many-sidedness by being apperceived as "spice" 



CULTURE DISCIPLINE AND DEMOCRACY 219 

that is brought from far away. Incidental apperception 
should not be wholly left to incidental experience. Instruc- 
tion should assure initial apperception through the greatest 
manysidedness and most permanent recurrence that are 
immediate. 

The most peculiar service of experience to varying apper- 
ception, however, consists of an external and accidental juxta- 
position of ideas wholly due to its incidental Exoerience 
nature. An idea once associated with a fre- useful 

quently recurring; and many-sided apperceivino; through 

. ^, t -^ V, • • -J accidental 

group IS, through its happenmgs, coincidences, ^^^ g^gjj 

and illogical combinations, brought into relation- absurd 
ships only less variable than the vagaries of a iyxtaposi- 
dream. Instruction should associate the optional 
material which it presents with the apperceiving groups com- 
mon to actual personal experience in which it is certain to 
be directly or indirectly useful. This accomplished, the 
accidents of experience may, through some one relationship 
in all the many-sidedness of the apperceiving group, bring the 
new material into contact with an idea to which only acci- 
dent or the providence of God himself could relate it. Many 
of the relationships most useful to modern civilization have 
been accidentally revealed — Watts, through the teakettle, 
and Newton, through the falling apple, each gained a great 
thought that would not have been possible if steam had 
been associated only with physical laws and not with 
teakettles, or gravitation through too pure a science with 
experimental apparatus in place of with every-day pheno- 
mena. 

So a foreign product, instead of merely being grouped with 
other exports in a list having only a narrow and specific 
usefulness, if associated as a domestic import with the use to 
which it is put, will have a better chance of being known in 
some new relationship. Each scientific principle apperceived 
through its most frequently recurring applications, each 
moral law or ideal of citizenship associated with what is most 
common in actual experience will through chance be put 



220 CULTURE DISCIPLINE AND DEMOCRACY 

into connections which instruction cannot anticipate and 
which failure to relate academic subject matter to life would 
make impossible. 

Similarly, the idea that is initially associated with some 
general part of the complete historical or geographical apper- 
ceiving systems is given a vastly increased chance of being 
connected with anything that the learner knows and comxs to 
know of the accidents and essential relationships of world 
experience since the dawn of history. Once associate a 
name, a fact, or an activity with the Age of Queen Elizabeth, 
the coal regions of Pennsylvania, China, the French Revolu- 
tion, the Mediterranean region, or the Civil War, and impres- 
sions, partial remembrances, and certain relationships which 
it may share come crowding into the mind to ensure a many- 
sided apperception and to encourage the identification of the 
general stimuli involved in general discipline. 

These certain and specific associations through geograph- 
ical and historical contiguity are equally essential to direct 
Increasingly Preparation for life, culture, and discipline, but 
exact geo- are commonly memorized no more thoroughly or 
graphical retained no more persistently than the thousand 
Teal location ^^^^ ^^^ more or less significant facts which with- 
essential as out them are far less likely to be useful. Per- 

knowledge gistent drill in general, as distinct from exact 
increases. . o j 

location, should figure in each stage of education. 

Exact location, either by date or point of the compass, usually 
makes no material addition to the number of details that may 
be usefully associated with it, and should be memorized only 
when it does. As each advancing stage of education in- 
creases the number of details that may be associated, increas- 
ingly exact location may, though not necessarily will, become 
necessary. Only the specialist need commit to memory in 
chronological order the names of Merovingians and Carlo- 
vingians or the relative location of the provinces of France. 
They are many-sided and recurring to the historian and the 
Frenchman, but not immediately many-sided and recurring 
to the majority of learners. 



CULTURE DISCIPLINE AND DEMOCRACY 221 

This drill in location should not be confined to the formal 

study of history and geography. Although in literature and 

art an esthetic appreciation is possible which ^^.^g^g ^^^ 

merely discriminates between the relatively good master- 

and the relatively bad, it remains difficult to pieces 

develop and retain in the absence of the identi- ^.^jj ^^^^ l^ 

fication of the masterpiece with its creator, and production, 

relatively unintelligent and non-suggestive, if un- nationaHty, 
. , . , 1 • 1 r • •!• /• 1 and epoch, 

associated with the period of civinzation, and even 

the nationaHty and the century, which inspired it. As al- 
ready pointed out, the names of artists should be mechanic- 
ally associated with their masterpieces, and of authors with 
their characteristic works; essayists should be associated 
with essayists, novelists with novelists. It is as important, 
from the standpoint of culture and direct preparation for 
leisure, to mechanically retain in chronological order the 
names of German composers, Italian painters, and French 
dramatists, and in the college course itself the names of 
Elizabethan poets, as for the specialists to know lists of hydro- 
carbons or theorems and corollaries in logical order. No 
name of a pre-eminently great writer or artist or of a pre- 
eminent masterpiece of literature or art which continually 
recurs in public library, art gallery, and museum, or even pop- 
ular periodicals and the public press, should remain unas- 
sociated with historical period or epoch, race, nationality, 
and general geographical locality. 

The initial memorizing or the drill necessary to the reten- 
tion of such material is as certainly the work of the college 
and professional school as of schools that are more g^^jj ^ggQ. 
elementary. The college must not refuse to elation as 
retail "second-hand" material through a "gen- *^"^y *^® 

work of 

eral information course" on the ground that a college as 
"lively man might find it for himself" by a of second- 
judicious use of the dictionary or the encyclo- ^^^ ^^ °° * 
pedia. Its function is to make the "lively man," not to 
take him for granted. It must not leave to chance the occa- 
sional but persistent review necessary to the retention of 



222 CULTURE DISCIPLINE AND DEMOCRACY 

the specific relationships which the self-active man must 
remember by and think with. 

Any idea, if in itself many-sided in the highest degree in 
potentially useful relationships, made permanent by contin- 
ual recurrence in every-day experience or through 
useful sys- ^^^ persistent repetition of memory drills, may 
terns make serve as the basis for retaining new ideas and for 

all many- giving them the greatest likelihood of being fully 
sidediiess «->>-'»-' o ^ 

useful. apperceived in relationships which will further 

general culture, general discipline, direct prepa- 
ration for life, and even specialization itself. They differ 
from the ordinary mental content, which may happen to be 
as many-sided, in the fact that, selected because they possess 
the greatest number of potentially useful relationships, they 
are to be made, so far as possible, common to all individuals 
for the sake both of furthering the common knowledge, 
activities, and culture essential to democracy, and of consti- 
tuting selected and specific relationships through which all 
new ideas will not only be associated, but definitely associ- 
ated. 

For example, it matters much, both to certainty of reten- 
tion and probability of further useful apperception, whether 
the story of the Prince and the Chief Justice is incidentally 
connected with a particular book, a pleasant afternoon, or 
a children's magazine, or specifically associated through 
instruction with England, the fifteenth century, and good 
citizenship. The two phases of the service which this specific 
apperception performs are well illustrated by the game of 
twenty questions. Starting in ignorance of the thing selected 
by one's opponents from the whole mass of possible ideas, 
the player successively determines that it is English, medieval, 
a person, a prince, and almost certainly guesses the Black 
Prince, one of the Princes in the Tower, or Prince Henry. 
Reversing this process, and starting with Henry, the possibil- 
ity of associating him with many other ideas steadily in- 
creases as you relate him to prince, English, medieval, and 
other terms about which a thousand other ideas cluster. 



CULTURE DISCIPLINE AND DEMOCRACY 223 

The incident of the Prince and the Justice may be remem- 
bered just as certainly by association in one mind with 
Dicken's ''Child's History of England," and in another with 
the story of the "Prince and the Pauper," but it is not poten- 
tially as useful as if it were associated in both minds through 
''medieval" with chivalry, feudalism, gorgeous costume, her- 
aldry, tournament, knightly faith, free cities; through "Eng- 
lish," not only wdth honesty and justice, Henrys and Ed- 
wards, Magna Charta, parliaments and barons, but with 
every English idea and event that each individual happens 
to remember from the coming of the Saxons to the coronation 
of Edward VII. If it is held in mind, with such miscellane- 
ous connections made as probable as possible, the mind is 
far more likely to perceive inherent relationships between it 
and other faithful justices, other just and honest princes, 
the popularity of royalty, confidence in the impartiality of 
courts, obedience to law and the doctrine of equal rights, than 
if it is remembered through association with another story 
or book. 

Obviously, however, the sum total of ideas presented to 
the mind through formal instruction cannot be made certain 
in such connections. Individual, incidental, and, instruction 
therefore, varying associations and apperceptions must ensure 
will be far more largely responsible for the cer- ^^^f "f*^°^ 
tain recollections, the mere remembrances, and most useful 
the impressions which form the greater part of apperceiv- 
education. It is the place of formal instruction to *^^ ^^^ ^^^' 
see, first, that these basal mnemonic and dynamic groups and 
sequences are themselves certainly fixed in mind, and, 
second, that the new ideas are presented as often as possible 
in relation to them. The part of the time effective for cer- 
tain memorizing and retention that need be devoted to this 
mnemonic and dynamic drill is relatively small. Probably 
less than five or ten minutes a day throughout the entire 
educational course would be quite adequate. But it is as 
necessary in the college, professional school, and university 
as in the high school or the lower grades. It may properly 



2 24 CULTURE DISCIPLINE AND DEMOCRACY 

be beneath the dignity of the college professor to serve as the 

drill master, but the drill master or, at least, examiner must 

be found, whether in professor or preceptor and tutor. So 

essential a basis for many-sidedness and interrelationship 

must not be taken for granted or left to chance. 

The optional content most useful to apperception is largely 

identical with that most useful to mere remembrance. With 

Efficiency ^^^^ directly and indirectly useful apperceiving 

of essential centers and systems certainly fixed in the mind 

content ^^ ^^le learner, the extent of the many-sidedness 

dependent . - .1,11 

upon the 01 varymg apperception depends upon the rela- 

usefulness tive usefulness and the quantity of optional 
op lona . iT^^aterial, and, so far as the recitation is con- 
cerned, the efficiency of the method through which it is pre- 
sented. It is at this point that the Herbartian contribution 
to method has been most helpful. The "five formal steps" 
are steps to apperception, and, in the absence of memory drill, 
usually to varying apperception, though "preparation" de- 
termines the associations in experience through which instruc- 
tion seeks to retain the new idea. In the absence, however, of 
the constant drill necessary to the dominance of a particular 
group, even "generalization" and "application" may serve 
no further purpose than the temporary association of a few 
ideas insufficient to create an apperceiving center. Every 
new association, however apperceived, even though tem- 
porary, tends to completeness of mental interconnection, and 
so favors both varying apperception and general discipline. 
From the quantitative standpoint, each foreign language, 
thoroughly enough acquired to be pleasurably read or orally 
com.prehended, may be made an effective instru- 
ofToreign^ ment to varying apperception through untran- 
languages a slated literature, business, travel, and even occa- 
great aid to sional letters and conversation. As has been al- 
perception. ready demonstrated, aside from direct usefulness 
in business, avocation, and academic or vocational 
specialization, it is through varying apperception, and not 
through general discipline, that the mastery of a foreign 



CULTURE DISCIPLINE AND DEMOCRACY 225 

language is usefuL The study necessary to its mastery, how- 
ever, involves a specific discipline peculiar to the language 
itself, and intellectual habits which can become general, but 
are little likely to become so through it. As for other aca- 
demic subjects and systems, if imperfectly and temporarily 
mastered, they make contribution, though not necessarily 
very useful contribution, to optional material. If thoroughly 
and permanently mastered, they become apperceiving centers 
and systems which are directly useful if included in direct 
preparation or specialization, and are indirectly useful through 
varying apperception in proportion to the many-sidedness 
and recurrence of their subject matter. 

6. Application of the Test for Relative Value to General Dis- 
cipline 
Certain of the relationships most useful to general disci- 
pline have either been already determined in the application 
of the test to cumulative impression and varying appercep- 
tion, or will form a part of what is specifically useful to direct 
preparation. But, while a relationship or group of relation- 
ships may be specifically useful enough to some phase of 
direct preparation to be made certain, before it is selected as 
a center for cumulative impression and varying apperception, 
with a view to general discipline, its stimulus must be de- 
termined in as general a form as is most useful through its 
many-sidedness and recurrence in fields of experience other 
than that in which it is developed. For example, ^^e deter- 
obedience will undoubtedly be included among the mination of 

relationships most useful to morality, industry, *^® stimu- 
, . . ^ . . , ,,. 1-.T lus general 

and citizenship, but obedience to what.^ In enough to 

morality its stimulus is individual judgment of be most 
right, backed by a moral code and all custom "^® " * 
accepted as essential to the well-being of the community that 
is not wrong for the individual. In industry it is every com- 
mand or direction of the employer which pertains to the em- 
ployment; in citizenship, law or the legal command of legally 
constituted officials. Each stimulus to obedience, which 

15 



226 CULTURE DISCIPLINE AND DEMOCRACY 

forms these various relationships with it, is plainly many- 
sided enough, and frequently recurring enough in each to be 
certainly mastered in each in all the specific relationships 
essential to general discipline. Indeed, the mastery of all 
will further the application of each in its separate field of 
usefulness. Each general stimulus to obedience must then be 
identified as generally as possible in the field in which it 
operates. It, with the specific relationships necessary to ap- 
plication, must become a part of the complex sys- 
useful habit tem of ideals, information, activities, and habits 
must have essential to morality, industry, or citizenship, 
specific gen- -g^^ obedience to morals, to employer, and to law 
must be identified with the still more many-sided 
and frequently recurring obedience to any command or 
direction not in itself evil, given by one who has the right 
to command. Here is the relationship which is most useful 
because it adds to its many-sidedness and recurrence from 
the standpoint of morality, industry, or citizenship, a still 
wider many-sidedness and recurrence in useful relationships 
from the high concept of obedience to the will of God or to 
the example of Christ, to boyish obedience to the captain of 
the nine or the eleven and the notion of fair play in all sport. 
In any one of these relationships the habit of obedience may 
be firmly formed, and from any one of these it may fail to 
carry over. The weakness in dependence upon "general 
moral habit," as against the specific development of moral 
habits essential to industry or citizenship, is that habits, 
including moral habits, are not general at all. The greatest 
likelihood of general application lies in certainly associating 
with each useful consequence, in addition to its most general 
stimulus that is useful, each stimulus that is useful in high 
degree in some specific field. And to both general and specific 
stimuli, the test of many-sidedness, frequency, and sensa- 
tional or emotional appeal must be applied. 

On the other hand, the stimulus most general within 
each specific field should be consciously, certainly, and per- 
sistently associated with the stimulus which is most useful 



CULTURE DISCIPLINE AND DEMOCRACY 227 

for all, in order that the cumulative impression But all must 
developed through all can be brought to bear upon ggd wlSiVhe 
each. Obedience to law will not necessarily most gen- 
result from obedience in home and school, ^^f^^^ "^®" 
obedience to employer, and obedience to moral 
judgments, but good-will toward law, the wish to obey it, 
will be tremendously re-enforced if its stimulus is identified 
with obedience in general, and so associated with a cumu- 
lative mass of ideals, feelings, imaginations, knowledge, 
actions, and habits which are applicable to all forms of 
obedience. 

With the exception of varying apperception, and the habit 
of analysis and synthesis on the recognition of any part 
of each general stimulus with a view to its identi- . ^ ,_ 
fication as a whole, all other conditions favorable tionships 
to general discipline are specific, and must be essential to 
included in direct preparation within the field of determined 
application. Here, again, is abundant reason through 
for including the development of essential moral *^®^^ ^®^^" 
habits in direct preparation, in place of hopefully 
depending upon the application of moral habits developed 
elsewhere. The determination of the particular fields, in 
which the useful many-sidedness and recurrence of the stimu- 
lus are highest, determines the fields in which detailed knowl- 
edge is to be acquired, the habits of analysis and synthesis 
made certain, and the habit of seeking possible applications 
formed. The relative many-sidedness and recurrence of 
particular details of knowledge, as a condition to application, 
determines which are essential. It is the many-sidedness, 
the recurrence, and even the sensational or emotional appeal 
of a particular application that determines whether it is suffi- 
ciently useful to be associated as a "type" of similar applica- 
tions. Even the particular habit which is to be made certain 
and sure, as the basis for all the complex associations favorable 
to its general application, must be selected on the ground 
of the relative many-sidedness, frequency, and emotional 
appeal of its general stimulus. 



228 CULTURE DISCIPLINE AND DEMOCRACY 

To continue the illustration, take obedience to law as a 
factor in citizenship. The basal habit of obedience, whether 
The test ^^ ^^^ home or elsewhere, cannot be taken for 
illustrated granted. Obedience to some stimulus or other 
through its niust be made sure for every pupil of the school, 
to the habit What is SO fully under the control of instruction, 
of obedi- and, at the same time, more immediate in its 
ence to law. many-sidedness, its recurrence, and its emotional 
appeal as the law of the school? From the standpoint of 
citizenship, however, the general stimulus of which the pupils 
are made habitually conscious must not be love of teacher, the 
hope of reward, the fear of punishment, rational conviction 
of the necessity of particular rules, the fact that they have been 
made by the school itself as a self-governing body, or even the 
presence of authority which has the moral right to command, 
but the naked fact that the law of the school is the law of the 
community and the state created by legislature and school 
board, and that the teacher is a legally constituted officer 
of that law. All other motives to obedience must unite to 
re-enforce the incentive of legality, but no one of them can be 
substituted for it. The teacher may be hated, reward 
scorned, punishment defied, the necessity for rule unappreci- 
ated, self-government betrayed, and moral motive undevel- 
oped, but the law of the school as the law of the state must 
be obeyed. No boy should be expelled or suspended from 
school, to be educated into outlawry through successful defi- 
ance of law, and to become to other pupils an impressive ex- 
ample that law can be successfully defied. On the contrary, 
his removal to some special institution or school where 
obedience can be effectively compelled should keep him in 
the habit of obedience to law, and accustom both him 
and his companions to the inexorability with which it is 
compelled. 

Continual identification of obedience to law, with the more 
general stimulus of any command given by one who has the 
right, performs the double service of re-enforcing the stimu- 
lus of law by the cumulative force of all other motives, and of 



CULTURE DISCIPLINE AND DEMOCRACY 229 

adding its force to theirs, but obedience to law must make a 
cumulative impression of its own. From the standpoint of 
citizenship, it is not only necessary to obey the law, but to 
obey the law because it is the law. So, with due regard for 
the test of relative worth for the sake of cumulative impres- 
sion, a few highly emotional illustrations are selected to be 
specifically and certainly associated with it as an emotional 
center for a gradually developing will to obey the law: the 
judge who condemns his own son, Gascoigne and Prince 
Henry, Christ and the tribute money. 

To these must be continually added incidents and exam- 
ples relatively impressive, many-sided and recurring, which, 
though themselves forgotten, will strengthen the common 
feeling of regard for and pride in obedience to law. Further- 
m.ore, such many-sided and frequently recurring ideals and 
habits of obedience as have been formed in the home should 
be made legally potent through persistent emphasis of the 
fact that the teacher stands in loco parentis. 

Similarly, the test of relative worth must be applied with 
a view to mere remembrance and to varying apperception. 
With the ideal of obedience to law must be specifically associ- 
ated the periods and the localities in which it is likely to have 
the most frequently recurring, many-sided and impressive 
relationships: the Roman Empire, the age of Justinian, the 
development of the British constitution. In addition, there 
must be brought to bear upon it as many as possible memory 
and apperceiving centers, less many-sided and recurring than 
democracy, habeas corpus, trial by jury, and other concepts 
that must be certainly memorized, but more many-sided and 
recurring than those which might be referred to or discussed: 
the common law, constitutional law, the canon law, despot- 
ism, anarchy, limited monarchy. These concepts whose lack 
of immediacy in many-sidedness and recurrence makes 
them the partial concepts and mere remembrances of the 
lower stages of advancement, become the concepts that must 
be fully comprehended and definitely and certainly associated 
in the more advanced grades. 



230 CULTURE DISCIPLINE AND DEMOCRACY 

For the remaining conditions to the general apphcation of 
the habit, specific discipline is solely responsible and the test 
of relative worth still more obviously applies. It is specific 
discipline that must certainly associate with law, as the 
stimulus to obedience, the few acts of obedience which will 
be most frequently recurring and many-sided for those who 
are being taught. With some schools it may be prevention 
of the defacement or destruction of property, public order 
during a strike, or observation of the law concerning the col- 
lection of refuse; with others, it may be the prevention of 
smuggling on returning from a trip to Europe, and the 
observation of the speed laws on the public highway. The 
associated applications will vary with locality, school, and 
grade, many-sidedness and recurrence always being deter- 
mining for locality and immediacy for grade. With the gen- 
eral stimulus must also be certainly associated such frequently 
recurring and many-sided fields of application as business, 
public health, property and person, together with the most 
many-sided and frequently recurring terms associated with 
each: receipt, contract, protest, levy; fumigation, health 
inspection, quarantine; trespass, lease, ejectment, damage, 
distinction between real and personal property; self-defence, 
resistance to an ofi&cer, assault and battery, perjury, and right 
of search. These are but a few examples of the terms which, 
immediately many-sided and recurring at various stages of 
educational progress, will aid in carrying over the habit of 
obedience to law if cumulative impression has created the 
will to make it general. 

Finally, it is self-evident that the selection of the general 
stimulus which is most useful, or of the most useful fields of 
application, is also determining for the habit of seeking out 
applications while in school, the habit of analysis and syn- 
thesis in particular fields, and the habit of analysis and syn- 
thesis with a view to the identification of the stimulus as a 
whole on the recognition of any of its parts. That is, the 
general test for relative value can be used not only with a 
view to determining the habits and relationships which should 



CULTURE DISCIPLINE AND DEMOCRACY 231 

be applied in other fields than those in which they The test 

are made certain, but to determining the various determines 

relationships which most effectively aid in carrying most useful 

them over. In direct preparation involving moral habits and 

or intellectual habits o^enerally useful, the memoriz- *?® ^f}.^~ 
^ . / ', tionships 

ing of these latter relationships must include those favorable 
essential to the general application of habits in to their ^ 
all fields of experience in which they are useful. ^^^ 
This follows not only from the desirability of carrying them 
over into other fields, but from the necessity of re-enforcing 
them in each specific field in which they are certainly devel- 
oped, with the sum total of influences which tend to make 
them stronger than possible alternatives. Obedience, truth- 
fulness, honesty, promptness, punctuality, industry, perse- 
verance, endurance, bravery, and their common personal 
and social factors, self-control, self-respect, consideration for 
others, the respect of others, love and self-sacrifice, whether 
developed and exercised in school or out, are always opposed 
by conflicting tendencies and habits, and need in any one 
field of experience the cumulative re-enforcement from all 
others in which they have become dominant. Their general 
application within each is dependent upon the certain memo- 
rizing or habitual operation of specific relationships rela- 
tively most useful to general discipline, including not only 
cumulative impression, but the whole group of favorable 
relationships just illustrated in discussing the general appli- 
cation of the habit of obedience. And the certainty of their 
application in each and the probability of their application in 
all is increased by each addition of the circle of specific 
relationships favorable to application in any one. 

From the standpoint of general discipline, then, it is as 
necessary to apply the test of relative worth to the relation- 
ships which constitute favorable conditions to the broadest 
useful application of a habit as to use it in the determina- 
tion of the basal habit itself. That the basal habit may 
be academic and certain of development in the mastery of 
a particular branch is no reason for developing it there as 



232 CULTURE DISCIPLINE AND DEMOCRACY 

a step toward general discipline, unless its subject matter 

also furnishes the relationships necessary to its carrying over 

The condi- ii^^o other fields, or special provision is made 

tions favor- through other subject matter and the life of the 

able to use- ig^^j-ner in school and out, to ensure its carrying 
ful general . . . . 

discipline over. A System of specific relationships, quite 

form a sys- distinct from any academic system, but equally 
from ^^ ^^^ complex and equally subject to the test of relative 
academic worth, is essential not only to direct preparation 
system. f^j. |j[£g^ ^^^ ^q ^j^g general application of each gen- 
erally useful moral or intellectual habit. Without direct and 
specific preparation for life, general discipline is at its minimum 
for the habits which academic training has made most sure. 

Since a branch of study as a systematic whole cannot be 
usefully applied outside the field for which it is specifically 
organized, its usefulness as a whole to general discipline is 
limited to its contribution of specific relationships which are 
to be carried over and the ensuring of cumulative impression 
and varying apperception necessary to general application. 
The inadequacy of the abstract subjects from this point of 
view, outside the province of specialization, has been cumu- 
latively emphasized. It is the rich subject matter of natural 
science, history, literature, and art which not only affords 
the material for directly useful organization, but which, 
through the organization peculiar to each branch as a whole, 
furnishes the apperceiving and memory centers and systems 
which further general discipline through var3dng appercep- 
tion and mere remembrance. 

There are, however, certain habits which the test of rela- 
tive worth will show highly useful, from the standpoint of 
General general application, that are dependent upon the 
moral and mastery of complex and systematic bodies of 
habitrcan- ki^'^wledge. The habit of progressive or cumula- 
not be de- tive analysis or S3nithesis which is necessary to 
veioped in the building up of complex logical wholes, of 
envh-on-^*^ exact thinking, which passes from initial premises 
ment. to conclusions which in time become premises, of 



CULTURE DISCIPLINE AND DEMOCRACY 233 

industry, exactness, persistence, and patience in complex 
and abstract endeavor, form a necessary part of the mental 
and spiritual equipment of all great thinkers. The ac- 
quisition of such habits, however, is a phase of specializa- 
tion. Since the individuals whose specialty demands them, 
whether it is vocational or liberal, will, from the same 
standpoint of direct preparation, just as certainly require 
mathematics and the languages, such carrying over as may 
be incidental to ''formal" and abstract study will result. But 
in the course of preparation for life in general a far differ- 
ent application of these intellectual and moral qualities is 
essential. If the patience and persistence which are equal 
to material that reacts against the worker through twistings 
and turnings, splittings and breakings that seem to make it 
perversely alive, or which overcome animate jj^g cumu- 
nature whose stupidity or folly, unfriendliness lative sys- 
or wickedness make perversity real, are not of *f ^^ essen- 
different quality from the patience and persist- preparation 
ence involved in the analysis and synthesis of ensure 
lines and symbols, they at least represent applica- ®°^' 
tion in so different a spiritual environment, and with so much 
stronger alternative impulses, that they must be separately 
developed. The moral or intellectual habit that triumphs 
over conflicting impulses and incentives must be something 
more than a by-product of academic achievement or even 
an essential condition to it. In order to have the inexora- 
bility to conquer material resistance and human opposition 
and temptation it must be made "stern" and strong, not 
merely from facing the complex problems involved in the 
mastery of great systems of thought, but from having the 
cumulative re-enforcement of a great intellectual, emotional 
and motor system of the application of which it is a part, and 
upon which its general application directly depends. In 
every-day life the spirit and the habits of science should be 
continually applied, but they are most certain of application 
when they are acquired through those parts of science that 
are not only organized as science, but in systematic relation- 



234 CULTURE DISCIPLINE AND DEMOCRACY 

ship to life itself. For the great mass of mankind it is safe to 
conclude that direct preparation will not only develop the 
moral and intellectual qualities most general in their useful- 
ness through the recurrence and many-sidedness of each essen- 
tial relationship best fitted to their perpetuation and general 
Manual in- application, but, through a sufficiently systematic 
dustrial and complex subject matter, to ensure the "stern" 
subject to resistance to application which Dr. Kerschen- 
the test of steiner finds lacking in academic elementary 
many- school work.^ The industrial training, in the 

and sense of manual training, which he urges as the 

recurrence, elementary substitute for the complex organiza- 
tion of more advanced studies, can be more truly regarded 
not only as a part of a highly organized direct preparation 
for morality or citizenship, but as a part for which the test of 
sensational appeal will not be determining in the absence of 
many-sidedness and recurrence useful to learners who are not 
specialists. 

Although he is safe in assuming that elementary and indus- 
trial manual training may result in the spirit of cheerful 
co-operation, it does not follow that, by industrializing the 
school, he has developed the cheerful spirit and basal habit 
of co-operation essential to good citizenship. He will find 
it hard enough to carry over his cheerful co-operation, re- 
sulting from an immediate interest in an exceptional and per- 
sonal task, to the monotonous grind of putting on boot-heels 
or polishing watch cases in an employer's factory. It is a 
still farther cry from individualistic occupation or cheerful 
co-operation in the making of a heel as part of a shoe that 
never will wear itself out on a workman's foot, or the polish- 
ing of a watch case that never will be scratched in a workman's 
pocket, to cheerful payment of one's just part of a pubHc 
tax or cheerful co-operation with the police force when the 
shop is shut down by a strike. From the standpoint of 
civic, as distinct from industrial training, better the more 
direct preparation of Miss Wister's League of Good Citizen- 
ship, with its cheerful co-operation in cleaning school grounds 



CULTURE DISCIPLINE AND DEMOCRACY 235 

and protecting private and public property,^ than that of 
the. manual training school, in making a desk or a book-rack 
to be displayed in the principal's office. 

The ideals, the partial concepts, the many-sidedness, and 
the habits, equally essential to direct preparation and general 
discipline, when once selected must be more specifically 
and certainly organized in every phase of direct preparation 
than in the academic branches whose organization is in part 
at least included in it. Including, as they then will, both the 
relationships which are to be generally applied and the rela- 
tionships through which application is made most certain, 
they must be as complex in their direct usefulness as a pure 
science in its abstraction. 

On the other hand, it can safely be asserted that the most 
thorough study of even a formal branch, in the absence of 
the certain memorizing of relationships quite 
external to its logical organization, far from General 
carrying over the resulting habits into other ^^^^^^an 
fields of experience, will fail to result in gen- academic 
eral discipline within the formal branch it- ^^^^^^ 
self. The great mass of pupils in arithmetic upon mem- 
are still confused in the face of miscellaneous orizing re- 
examples, and students in geometry are yet ^^^^^^i^^ 
helpless when confronted by original theorems to it. 
and problems. 

To illustrate, a student may know every proposition re- 
garding the relation between lines and angles and the equality 
of triangles, and still be unable to demonstrate the simplest 
original theorem involving them. Given the fact that one 
angle equals another or is to be proved equal to another, he 
must not only know the preceding theorems and their demon- 
strations, but he must have firmly associated with the notion 
of equal angles every way in which they have been demon- 
strated equal — exterior-interior angles, alternate-interior 
angles, vertical angles, right angles, corresponding angles of 
equal triangles, opposite basal angles in an isosceles triangle, 
superimposed angles, angles equal to a common angle, etc. 



236 CULTURE DISCIPLINE AND DEMOCRACY 

Similarly, with the notion of equal triangles, he must have 
associated triangles having two sides and the included angle 
equal, three sides equal, coincidence on superposition, etc. 
These relationships — conditions to general discipline within 
the branch, which many teachers of geometry do not drill into 
the minds of pupils — are far more many-sided and frequently 
recurring than the theorems themselves, which, when sys- 
tematically memorized, collectively constitute a thoroughly 
adequate specific discipline. So with the habit to which 
they are a condition, the habit of progressive analysis and 
synthesis, with a view to the identification of each familiar 
stimulus, and consequently the drawing of every formal con- 
clusion which is possible at each new stage of the demonstra- 
tion or solution. Quite outside of the formal subject matter 
of geometry, and not necessarily involved in the mastery of 
theorems whose demonstration is given by the text-book, 
are specific relationships and habits, in the absence of which 
independent general application within the geometrical field 
itself is improbable. The relative fewness of the specific 
relationships and habits essential to general discipline in 
geometry, presents sufficient contrast with those essential to 
the general carrying over of a moral habit, both to indicate 
why an abstract subject is least likely to be in itself adequate 
to general discipline in other fields, and to suggest the fact 
that relationships vary greatly in the sum total of specific 
associations and habits necessary to make them as general 
in their application as is useful and possible. But each rela- 
tionship, useful enough to be generally applied through the 
independent self-activity of the pupils, must have specifically 
associated with it other specific relationships and habits, 
essential from the standpoint of general discipline, whose 
relative worth is determinable, like that of the general rela- 
tionship itself, by their relative many-sidedness, frequency, 
and sensational or emotional appeal. 



CHAPTER IX 

APPLICATION OF THE TEST OF RELATIVE WORTH TO SPECIFIC 
DISCIPLINE, WITH THE CONSEQUENT DETERMINATION OF 
A CUMULATIVE AND DOMINATING SYSTEM, BOTH DI- 
RECTLY AND INDIRECTLY USEFUL 

I. Specific Discipline as Essential to Formal Self -activity as to 
Direct Preparation and Specialization 

Perhaps the most important fact that has been cumula- 
tively demonstrated in the preceding discussion is that the 
indirect furtherance of the educational aim, through the 
various phases of formal or educational self-activity, demands 
a system of specific relationships and habits quite distinct 
from the various branches of human knowledge organized as 
wholes, or the even more complex and certain systems essen- 
tial to direct preparation for life. While thus distinct from 
both specific academic learning and specific preparation for 
life, it is a necessary part of each, and each must furnish the 
basal relationships which it should make general, and with 
which its peculiar relationships must be specifically and 
certainly associated. 

Hence, from the standpoint of specific discipline, the rela- 
tionships essential to the usefulness of cumulative impression, 
mere remembrance, varying apperception, and 
general discipline are of the highest value, and j-epetit^n 
must be made as certain and enduring as those essential to 

directlv essential to life or to academic specializa- intellectual 
i , . 11 •,. 1 r and moral 

tion. Ignored m text-books, omitted from courses freedom. 

of study, neglected by the mass of teachers, 
they constitute the only means to the independent self -activ- 
ity which is the ideal of the new education. Before the hu- 
man mind can independently remember and] think in the 
most useful relationships, it must have certainly, cumula- 

237 



238 CULTURE DISCIPLINE AND DEMOCRACY 

tively, and systematically mastered the relationships which 
it can most usefully remember by and think with. The 
slavery of imitation, memorizing, drill, accumulation, and 
review must precede and accompany intellectual and moral 
freedom. 

Specific discipline includes: 

(i) The specific relationships and systems essential to 
formal self-activity which have just been discussed and 
illustrated. While distinct from academic learn- 
d^cipline ^^S' ^^^^ include the general relationships essen- 
includes tial to some academic branches as wholes, such 
three dis- ^^g general geographical and historical location and 
connected sequence, and many-sided and frequently re- 
systems of curring terms and principles, 
specific re- /^\ rj.^^ specific relationships and systems 

lationships. ^ ^ . , ^T . .^ ... . -^ , 

essential to direct preparation for life m general. 
Their determination through the application of the general 
test for relative worth will soon be discussed and illustrated 
under different phases of the educational aim. They include 
many particular academic relationships, and occasionally 
academic branches in part or as wholes, such as portions of 
civil government from the standpoint of citizenship and 
general elementary science from that of industrial efficiency. 
With these and the relationships necessary to such general 
application as is useful, they constitute more complex sys- 
tems than the academic branches themselves. 

(3) The specific relationships and systems essential to 
specialization. They include all academic branches as wholes 
when mastered with a view either to academic or vocational 
specialization. Within the subject matter of each branch 
regarded as a systematic whole, as well as for particular re- 
lationships that further the specialty, the test of many-sided- 
ness, recurrence, and emotional appeal is determining. 

In most existing courses of study the specific relationships 
and systems essential both to formal self-activity and to 
direct preparation for life are given only in so far as they are 
naturally included in academic subjects. Science, literature, 



CULTURE DISCIPLINE AND DEMOCRACY 239 

history, and civil government, for example, however academic 
the selection of their subject matter, contain a varying 
amount of material of direct worth to citizenship, morality, 
or industry. History and geography present the general 
sequences and locations in time and space favorable to mere 
remembrance and varying apperception. But the most 
''formal" or disciplinary subjects of them all fail to include 
as an essential part of their subject matter the relationships 
favorable to general discipline. 

The application of the general test for selection, within and 
without existing text-books and courses of study, should 
result, first, in a sharp contrast between specific relation- 
ships and grouping, most useful, either in direct preparation 
or academic specialization, and those relatively less useful; 
second, in the determination of those so essential that they 
must be certainly memorized and generally applied, and 
eventually through indication of the relationships most 
favorable to such application, in the building up of inter- 
related systems of thought and action that will dominate 
life and character. 

2. Application of the Test to Direct Preparation for the Various 
Phases of the Educational Aim 

Where the test of relative worth has been applied to specific 
discipline, as it already has been to the other phases of 
formal self-activity, it will be still more clearly Rgjjj^j^g 
evident that, whether the several phases of the worth of the 
educational aim are to be directly or indirectly various 
furthered, the means of determining the relative ^j^g ^:^^ 
worth of relationships remain the same. Indeed, itself only 
theoretically, it can be used to determine the theoretic- 

3,llv useful 

relative usefulness of the various phases of the 
aim themselves, through their relative many-sidedness and 
recurrence, both in the present or an ideal civilization, and 
in all succeeding epochs of social and national development. 
While the ethical and the healthful, being general in their 
application to the more specific phases of life, have always 



240 CULTURE DISCIPLINE AND DEMOCRACY 

been the most, many-sided and frequently recurring, the 
extent of even their usefulness has varied, both with geo- 
graphical location and in the course of human history. 
Where individuals live crowded together, whether in Eskimo 
huts or a great city, relationships affecting health are more 
frequently recurring and many-sided than when they live 
apart. Where physicians are rare and inaccessible, or their 
skill is limited, more relationships affecting health are directly 
useful to those not specialists. Citizenship takes on far 
more many-sided relationships under a democracy than 
under a despotic form of government. Industrial efficiency 
demands far more relationships in complex civilization than 
primitive life, but demands proportionately less many-sided 
skill on the part of each individual when industry is highly 
specialized. Even leisure, as pointed out in discussing cul- 
ture, is more frequently recurring as the condition of labor 
is improved, and more many-sided as social life itself becomes 
more complex. If the relative educational worth of the vari- 
ous phases of the aim is to be theoretically determined, it 
must be through their relative recurrence and many-sidedness 
for the majority of individuals in a given country and in a 
particular period rather than through Mr. Spencer's evalua- 
tion based on the contribution which each makes 
timVdi-*'^^ to racial survival. Practically, however, the part 
voted to that each is to play in the present courses of study 
each jg determined more by relative difficulty of realiza- 

upon^rela- ^ion and efficiency of method than by its relative 
tive dim- theoretical worth. As each phase is so essential 
culty of ^j^^^ -^ j^^g^ ^^ realized as fully as possible at 
each stage of educational development, those that 
demand more or stronger ideals and incentives, more many- 
sided knowledge, more complex habits, greater system and 
more many-sided application, will take up a proportionately 
larger part of the course of study and of the time available for 
memorizing, and the time occupied by each will be lessened or 
increased by the relative efficiency of the methods of instruc- 
tion which are brought to bear. The relative theoretical 



CULTURE DISCIPLINE AND DEMOCRACY 241 

value of the various phases will become determining only in 
case it shall be found that the time available for formal 
education is inadequate for the realization of all, and conse- 
quently that choice must be made among them. With the 
course of study limited to subject matter and organization 
that stand the test of relative usefulness, together with the 
introduction of effective method, the time available for formal 
education should be fully adequate. This becomes even more 
probable if, with a more many-sided course of study which 
interchanges physical and aesthetic activities with mental 
work, the length of the school day and the school year is 
increased for all learners, and, through continuation school 
paralleling and for half of the day taking the place of indus- 
trial occupation, the number of years spent in formal educa- 
tion is extended for those compelled by economic conditions 
to leave the ordinary school. 

With the general interest which has been aroused in direct 
preparation for life, it is almost inconceivable that the first 
essential step toward determining the relative a 1 -c f 
worth of the subject matter of instruction — the general 
analysis of general phases of the aim into definite pjiases of 
and specific ends — has yet to be taken for citizen- essary con- 
ship, industrial efficiency and social service, has dition to 
been so recently taken for health and has application 
been so partially taken for religion and morality. 

The many-sidedness, frequency, and emotional force with 
which a particular relationship furthers good citizenship may 
be determined without analysis, but not the sum total of the 
relationships which further it with most many-sidedness, 
frequency, and emotional force. In such familiar terms as 
patriotism, love of country, obedience to law, political hon- 
esty, "cheerful co-operation," and self-government we have 
the present loose conception of what good citizenship means. 
It is indefinite, unanalyzed, incomplete. The use of obedi- 
ence to law, as an illustration of the application of the test 
from the standpoint of general discipline and of equal rights, 
as an example of the complexity and system essential to 

16 



242 CULTURE DISCIPLINE AND DEMOCRACY 

direct instruction, has already demonstrated how far analysis 

must go if the test is to be adequately applied. Take, for 

further example, love of country. No search for emotional 

material, which is suflSciently many-sided and frequently 

recurring to most effectively develop it, can be intelligently 

carried on until it is analyzed into all the definite and specific 

factors which constitute it. It includes love of country in the 

physical sense — the love of mountains and liills, rivers and 

valleys, forests and flowers, gray mists or sunny skies. 

It embraces the more personal love of home — of "altars and 

fires," "green graves," and scenes of childhood. It extends 

to pride in national characteristics and achievements — the 

simplicity and democracy of American life, heroic deeds in 

war and peace, industrial triumphs, feats of engineering 

skill, national music, literature and art. It finally reaches 

confidence in national power and influence, and culminates 

in love of political freedom and equality for all mankind — 

the spirit of American democracy. When the general aim 

is once analyzed into such definite ideals, the test of relative 

worth is easy to apply. It is not necessary to compare the 

usefulness of love of country with obedience to law, or even 

their component ideals one with another. In their specific 

association together, as general and subordinate phase of 

citizenship, they are so many-sided, frequently recurring, and 

highly emotional as to be obviously essential in their sum 

total. But with their subordinate ends once determined, it 

becomes easy to apply the test to the selection of subject 

matter that will not only be relatively useful in developing 

love of nature, home, and national characteristics and 

achievement, but in relating it to citizenship. 

Since formal self-activity is included in direct preparation, 

perhaps the greatest aid to analysis of the various phases of 

. , . the aim is consideration of each from the stand- 

Analysis . - , . . 

and organ- pomt 01 Cumulative impression, mere remem- 

izationmust brance, varying apperception, and specific and 

icafasvfell' g^^^^^al discipline. Each form of educational self- 

as logicaL activity, if it is to be made as useful as possible 



CULTURE DISCIPLINE AND DEMOCRACY 243 

to a particular phase of the aim, demands the selection and 
presentation of the relationships which ensure the greatest 
many-sidedness, frequency of recurrence, and emotional 
appeal for it, and at the same time specifically bring it into 
definite association v/ith the particular aim. Recognition 
of the feelings, the sentiments, the viewpoints, the interests, 
the ideals, and the public opinion that cumulative impression 
must create; of the concepts that are, for the time at least, to 
be partial and merely remem^bered; of the knowledge and 
information within the particular phase which most certainly 
and usefully relate it to every other field of experience and 
every other field to it; of relationships or habits which must 
be made specific and sure ; of the further relationships neces- 
sary to general discipline within the particular phase and 
without it, potentially assists in analyzing religion, morality, 
health, industrial efficiency, social service, citizenship, and 
avocation into definite ends, and in preventing a partial and 
one-sided attempt to achieve each general phase through the 
emphasis of some one of its more apparent or more easily 
attainable ends to the exclusion of others. Civil Govern- 
ment, "school city," or "cheerful co-operation'' cannot 
separately ensure good citizenship. Scientific temperance 
instruction is not the sole antidote for the social temptations 
of strong drink. Religion must not remain dogma alone or 
vague emotion. Education itself must not become merely a 
point of view. Each phase of the aim must be analyzed into 
its essential parts, and throughout the course of education 
the sum total of relationships that are most useful, whether 
directly or indirectly, must be made certain and permanent. 
Education, in place of being academic knowledge and disci- 
pline, which gradually merge their certainty into a vague 
culture or point of \dev/, is rather a cumulative emergence of 
certainty from impression and varying apperception. While 
at every stage of instruction all of the five forms of educational 
self-activity are being developed, the impressions and mere 
remembrances of one stage become more adequate concepts 
in the next, the partial concepts and varying associations of 



244 CULTURE DISCIPLINE AND DEMOCRACY 

earlier years, the habits of adult life, until collectively they 

form a system which, increasingly certain in its essential 

parts, and, therefore, increasingly useful in the general 

trend of its varying associations, determines character and 

dominates action. 

In the case of religion and of morality the analysis of the 

general phase into particular ends has long been complete. 

Logical '^^^ Sermon on the Mount, twelfth chapter of 

analysis of Romans, and the thirteenth chapter of Second 

religion, Corinthians eloquently specify the Christian vir- 

morality, _, ^ .^ , t • i i 

and health tues. The Jewish religion largely owes its per- 

relatively petuation to the definiteness of its requirements, 
complete. ^^^ their continual repetition in accordance with 
scriptural injunction. The moral code of all peoples is 
equally definite and specific. Within the last few years the 
conditions essential to good health have been scientifically 
specified and demonstrated. But their further analysis into 
such definite relationships that the test of relative worth can 
be applied, together with both the general and detailed analy- 
sis of industrial efficiency, social service, good citizenship, and 
the activities proper to leisure, has been checked by failure to 
consider the relationships necessary to formal self-activity. 
It is not only faith, honesty, cleanliness, legal aid 
Pedagog- ^Q ignorant or poverty stricken defendants, the 
still lacking doctrine of equal rights, or appreciation of litera- 
for all ture that analysis must reveal, but the feeling 

the Sm? ^^ faith, the ideal of honesty, pleasure in cleanli- 
ness, interest in legal aid, devotion to equal 
rights, and a love of literature; the essential vocabulary 
of each, even where partially understood, and as many 
words and ideas relating to each as can in varying associa- 
tions be held in mind; the habits that are basal for each, 
together with the associated fields of application, typical 
examples, emotional centers, knowledge necessary to 
identification, specific stimuli to analysis and synthesis, 
and all the other conditions necessary to their general 
application. 



CULTURE DISCIPLINE AND DEMOCRACY 245 

Analysis, with a view to thus searching out the specific 
relationships favorable to cumulative impression, mere re- 
membrance, varying apperception, and general discipline, 
goes further and is more inclusive than the mere subdivision 
of general principles into a formal outline. 

3. Determination of the Relative Worth of Specific Relation- 
ships Results in Specific System 

As the test of relative worth is applied to these definite 
and specific relationships the inevitable result is system — 
a system not merely logical, but pedagogical and dynamic. 
The definite ends into which each phase of the aim is ana- 
lyzed are co-ordinated, subordinated, and interrelated. In 
place of comprehensive outlines suitable for the exliaustive 
classification of details, the groups of relationships proved to 
be most useful to the various forms of educational self- 
activity are associated with each. If the most many-sided, 
frequently recurring, and usefully emotional are firmly 
memorized and retained not merely through varying ap- 
perception, but definite and specific review; if persistent 
instruction gives continuity in formal education to what 
experience will give continuity in life, every form of self- 
activity will result through direct preparation for life, and 
indirectly as well as directly contribute to it. It is in this 
sense that moral and religious training, preparation for 
citizenship, and education for every other phase of life should 
be formal — not in that of a logically organized body of 
knowledge. It is this that Jacotot was groping after when 
he had Telemachus memorized verbatim to become the 
basis for the retention and assimilation of all other knowl- 
edge.^^ It is this, limited to the academic subjects, that in 
the classroom of Elihu Nott gave Francis Wayland the clue 
to his "new system," with its incessant drill upon the funda- 
mental relationships of the various college subjects.^^ It is 
this, forgotten by the new education in its easier develop- 
ment of apperception and interest, that is, after all, the only 



246 CULTURE DISCIPLINE AND DEMOCRACY 

certain means through which all self-activity can be made 
useful. 

System, in this sense, must be sharply distinguished from 
an outline or mode of procedure that classifies and inter- 
relates according to some formal logical scheme, 
s ^stem ^^^^ ^^y system, outline, or mode of procedure tem- 
sharply dis- porarily aids mere remembrance, and, so long 
tinguishable ^g it is retained in part or as a whole, continues 
outline.^^ to further varying apperception. Most tem- 
porary, and hence, most delusive of all, is the 
painstaking outline applicable only to the specific details 
which it has classified. Whether it applies to the facts of a 
particular year, administration, country, or set of products, 
or the treatment peculiar to a particular lecture course or 
text-book, the more elaborate it is, the more readily it is 
forgotten. Ordinarily, its one possible survival, except 
such details as it has held in mind long enough for them to 
be otherwise apperceived and retained, is the habit of out- 
lining, and hence of analyzing, the particular sort of subject 
matter it included. In case the learners have repeatedly 
and successfully made such outlines for themselves, the 
practice may become habitual, though mainly within the 
particular subject matter alone, unless, as is little likely, 
the conditions favorable to more general application are 
ensured. If a particular outline is not too elaborate in its 
ramifications, and its subject matter is not likely to be held 
in mind in other relationships, a high degree of many-sided- 
ness, frequency of recurrence, and emotional appeal may jus- 
tify its retention through persistent review. The mass of 
the outlines given to learners and required of them, however, 
''the hammering the facts home," against which President 
Butler has so forcibly protested,^^ not only substitutes some- 
thing to be remembered for something to remember by 
and think with, but something that will not be remembered 
long. 

The same conclusion is less likely to be true in the case 
of the general outline or mode of procedure common to 



CULTURE DISCIPLINE AND DEMOCRACY 247 

a considerable number of particulars. Its de- Even useful 

lusive phase lies in exhaustiveness and elaborate- outlines, 

r_-, ,, , ,,,... 1 . many-sided 

ness. The more thorough it is m this sense, and recur- 

the more likely it is to be forgotten. More than ring, but a 
this, an exhaustive mode of procedure which in- pedagogic 
eludes all details in each case in which it is ap- system, 
plied cannot be general, and carries the unneces- 
sary burden of specific parts for which all the limitations of 
the specific outline hold true. From the standpoint of 
memorizing and permanent retention its weakness lies in 
the fact that, both in these specific parts and in those that 
are general, it is certain to include relationships too little 
many-sided, recurring, or emotional to be highly useful. 
Restricted, however, to essential relationships, the general 
outline or mode of procedure becomes a necessary part, 
though but a part of the system whose memorizing, inces- 
sant review, and cumulative force constitute direct prepara- 
tion. For example, take the practice which has been rather 
popular in the teaching of geography of applying to each 
country a more or less exhaustive outline, including location, 
boundaries, area, population, subdivisions, climate, physiog- 
raphy, natural products, manufactures, cities, . ,. .. 
and all other topics necessary to completeness, of the test 
It is convenient for a teacher or a text-book ^^ relative 
maker who wishes to be sure to leave nothing out. outline 
If it could be readily retained in school and after illustrated 
school it would constitute a memory and ap- ^^°°^ 
perceiving center. But it usually contains far 
too much for ready retention and recall, and includes factors 
which either apply to but one or two countries, or call for 
details which are neither many-sided, frequently recurring, 
nor emotional. Few geographies present subdivisions for the 
mass of countries. If they do, the most of them, together 
with such more general topics as area and population, are so 
little many-sided and recurring in any useful connection that 
it is folly to either present or retain them. Boundaries 
are useless to the mass of learners in any more exact sense 



248 CULTURE DISCIPLINE AND DEMOCRACY 

than is involved in general geographical sequence, that is, 
it is useful to know what countries are adjacent, but usually 
useless to know the exact curves and limits of certain lines 
upon a map; still more so, except for the sake of manual 
dexterity or artistic skill, to draw them neatly. What 
associations come crowding into the mind of the ordinary 
student from the fact that Germany's area is two hundred 
and eight thousand eight hundred and thirty square miles, 
or five times the size of Pennsylvania, or from whether each 
little curve of the Rhine is from east to west or north to 
south, whether the population is fifty millions or fifty-two 
millions two hundred and seventy-nine thousand, nine 
hundred and fifteen, or whether it is ten times that of 
Illinois! On the other hand, if the general outline is limited 
to a small enough number of topics for them to be readily 
memorized and retained, topics that are common to all 
countries, and hence many-sided and frequently recurring, 
and especially if they stand in essential relationship to each 
other, their mechanical memorizing as common to all is 
the most certain guarantee of definite and intelligent work. 
Climate and physiographical features, natural products, 
population, industry, and commerce constitute a necessary 
sequence of topics which ensures not only a means of recol- 
lection, but a stimulus to thought and reflection. 

An effective pedagogic grouping such as this is a more 
essential factor in even academic system than exhaustive 
A trn classification. But in system, organized for 
may itself direct preparation for some specific phase of life, 
become many such groupings cumulatively combine with 
that^^°^^^' other interrelationships which are immeasur- 
formalin ably more potential and more certainly "dis- 
the true ciplinary" than the logical organization which 
constitutes academic system. Here relation- 
ships are selected on account of their many-sidedness, recur- 
rence, and emotional force, and not for the sake of logical 
completeness. They are related to each other not as 
divisions and subdivisions, but as emotional centers, words 



CULTURE DISCIPLINE AND DEMOCRACY 249 

and ideas necessary to apperception or application, generally 
useful stimuli and conditions favorable to general discipline. 
Except from the standpoint of specialization, academic 
branches are included not as wholes, but in their most many- 
sided, recurring, and emotional parts; not in Academic 
isolation from each other, but re-enforcing each branches 
other wherever they can be most useful, whether included in 
in direct furtherance of the educational aim or gystem^^*^ 
in indirect furtherance through formal self- through 

activity. This is the true correlation and con- *^®"^ ,°^°^* 

. , . , , . , . , useful parts, 

centration to which academic correlation and 

concentration, from the standpoint of a special subject or 

"remote from life," are at best but a helpful condition. 

Every imaginable relationship, every branch of knowledge as 

a whole, is at least a possible means to mere remembrance 

and varying apperception or a basis for them. 

But direct preparation demands, in place of the poten- 
tially useful but readily forgotten elaborateness and com- 
pleteness of exact sciences and of academic branches in 
general, a certain and permanent system, every relationship 
of which has not only been selected and organized for its 
potentially many-sided, recurring, and emotional further- 
ance of life, but through which such furtherance will become 
cumulatively more many-sided, recurring, and emotional. 

A good example of such a dynamic whole can be given by 

collectively calling to mind the various illustrations which 

citizenship has furnished from the standpoint .j^he peda- 

of system and of the various phases of formal gogic force 

self-activity. First, continual consciousness on °^ direct 

... preparation 
the part of teacher and learner that citizenship, illustrated 

together with morality, health, industrial effi- through _ 

ciency, social service, and avocation, is the aim " ^^^^^ ^* 

of the school. No one of these aims must be disassociated 

with the other; no one emphasized at the expense of the 

other. With American citizenship must be inalienably 

associated the idea of love of country, of co-operation for 

the general welfare, of equal rights; with love of country, 



250 CULTURE DISCIPLINE AND DEMOCRACY 

the emotional centers and experience which in highest degree 
further love of natural scenery, of spots hallowed with the 
sacred associations of home, and of essential national charac- 
teristics and ideals, pride in great national achievements in 
war and in peace; with co-operation for the general welfare, 
participation in self-government, obedience to law, the 
payment of taxes, self-sacrifice for the common good, the 
furtherance of national and international peace and goodwill, 
safeguarding of public interests, defense of the national honor; 
with equal rights, equality before the lav/, equal suffrage, 
equal participation in public benefits. To each of these 
definite ends must be specifically added the re-enforcement 
of general morality, and of the sum total of the feelings and 
ideals that constitute love of country. With each must be 
associated such systems of cumulative impression, partial 
concepts, related knowledge, fixed relationships and habits, 
and specific and general conditions necessary to application 
as have been illustrated in detail for equal rights and obe- 
dience to law. 

It is in the subordinate but essential form of information 
and related knowledge that academic system plays its part 
in direct preparation for citizenship and each other phase of 
life. For example, while equal suffrage must call to mind 
qualifications for suffrage, woman suffrage, naturalization, 
the race question, the habit of personally exercising the right, 
and so on, and each of these, in turn, must suggest memory 
and emotion centers, specific relationships, and the condi- 
tions necessary to general application, there should come 
with it all in proper association and subordination facts 
and related groups of ideas drawn in part from academic 
subjects. To illustrate, qualifications for suffrage should 
include not only the provisions in regard to suffrage in the 
United States constitution, but the facts which United States 
history gives concerning the qualifications for suffrage in the 
various colonies, and steps taken toward universal suffrage 
after the Revolution. To this should ultimately be added 
the story of the English "rotten boroughs," the Reform Bill of 



CULTURE' DISCIPLINE AND DEMOCRACY 251 

1832, and similar material from modern European history. 
Since knowledge necessary to the intelligent exercise of 
citizenship is an essential subdivision both of qualifications 
for suffrage and of the habit of individually exercising the 
right, all this must be supplemented by a highly organized 
body of knowledge concerning qualifications for office and 
public issues. This embraces not only various sections of 
civil government, but much historical, economic, sociological, 
literary, and even scientific material, together with syste- 
matic study of contemporary newspapers, books, and 
periodicals. Resulting from this or added to it is a mass of 
incidental information including both definite knowledge 
and partial concepts — ^Australian ballot, suffragist, plurality, 
voter's assistants, repeaters, and similar terms. 

From the standpoint of system the fundamental question 
here is, not shall there be a highly complex and specific 
system of direct instruction organized for citi- 
zenship and each other general phase of the ^oj-th 
educational aim, but shall it include or take the determines 
place of academic organization. From the *^® tr*t^* 
standpoint of specialization and indirect fur- academic 
therance of the aim, there is no question as to the systems 
necessity for the logical schemes of organization ^°^i° ^".* °^ 
peculiar to each academic subject. In the case 
of indirect furtherance, it must be a general outline of the 
subject, including, for the sake of varying apperception, 
such interrelationships as are most many-sided and recurring 
in every-day life; in that of specialization, if vocational, all 
that the usual test proves essential, and if academic, the 
system in all of its fulness and complexity. But the extent 
to which academic organization figures, in direct furtherance 
of each phase of the aim embraced in general preparation 
for life, is determined purely through application of the test 
of relative worth. While the specific relationships selected 
become an essential part of a system of direct preparation, 
they are not necessarily taught in isolation from other subject 
matter belonging to the same academic branch. On the con- 



252 CULTURE DISCIPLINE AND DEMOCRACY 

trary, if the branch is taught as a whole, whether from the 
standpoint of indirect furtherance or speciaUzation, varying 
apperception and other conditions essential to general 
discipline are effectively served by the correlation which 
results when the selected subject matter is taught as a part 
of both the directly useful and the academic systems. 
From the standpoint of indirect furtherance this is con- 
spicuously true of geography and history, including the 
history of science, literature, and art. From the standpoint 

of specialization it is true of any branch of 
useful sys- knowledge. In subjects thus taught as wholes, 
tern possible regardless of the amount of directly useful 
within the material they contain, the purpose of direct in- 
branches. struction will be most effectively furthered if 

all essential directly useful material is included 
and consciously and continually grouped by the learner under 
the cumulative topics of religion and morality, health, 
industrial efficiency, social service, good citizenship, and 
avocation. This in no sense takes the place of the complex 
specific systems necessary to direct furtherance, but use- 
fully correlates the academic branches with them. 

When, however, the subject matter of the academic 
subjects is taught only from the standpoint of direct further- 
ance or general discipline, whether it shall be presented as 
an academic whole or academically organized at all, de- 
pends upon the nature and amount of academic subject 
matter included through application of the test of relative 
worth. For example, although arithmetic is taught for the 
sake of industrial efficiency and a discipline which for the 
most part is specific, from both points of view it must be 
taught as an academic whole. Various applications have 
The scope been excluded as useful only to the specialist, 
of academic j-,^^ j^g higher processes are dependent upon the 
in general lower, and both practical applications of proc- 
education esses and principles, and such moral and intel- 
itrrelative ^^^^^^^ habits as may be generally applied, upon its 
worth. mastery as an academic branch. Hence, it must 



CULTURE DISCIPLINE AND DEMOCRACY 253 

be taught as an organized academic whole, in spite of the 
fact that its peculiar organization is useless to varying 
apperception except through a confusion of the many-sided- 
ness and recurrence of a particular application with the 
many-sidedness and recurrence of the material to which it is 
applied. On the other hand, physiology and anatomy, 
introduced by the Combes and Horace Mann, and sanctioned 
by Mr. Spencer for the sake of health, are rapidly taking on 
a purely hygienic form to the exclusion of anatomical and 
physiological treatment. Here the subject matter is directly 
useful to those not specialists only from the standpoint of 
hygiene, and the details necessary to complex academic 
organization in the old physiological sense are not included. 
A somewhat similar change in organization would ultimately 
take place with civil government, useful to the majority 
only as directly preparatory to citizenship, were it not that 
so many of its logical groupings are directly useful in their 
academic interrelationships. That is, civil government, 
as an organized academic whole itself, becomes a part of the 
specific system which furthers good citizenship. With it, 
the application of the test of relative worth for the sake of 
direct furtherance will merely eliminate technical subdivi- 
sions and prevent the absurdity of young children memor- 
izing the United States constitution in all of its parts. 

In the case of the natural sciences the contribution to 
direct furtherance comes in the shape of both isolated facts 
and general principles. However great the amount of 
material included by the test of relative usefulness, such 
complexities as Joseph Payne encountered in his effort 
scientifically to explain the piledriver make impossible the 
teaching of complete sciences except to the specialist. But 
while each specific relationship must become a part of the 
system of direct preparation which it furthers, as Thomas 
Hill long ago pointed out, it need not be taught in academic 
isolation, but in illustration of a principle, whose study even 
as distinct from others not only ensures in part the organiza- 
tion necessary to academic system, but affords opportunity 



254 CULTURE DISCIPLINE AND DEMOCRACY 

for experimentation and the acquisition of the intellectual 
and moral habits peculiar to laboratory work. 

As for the general discipline, so long assumed to be im- 
probable without the mastery of formal academic branches as 
wholes, an overwhelming sum-total of facts, arguments, and 
illustrations has shown it to be the crowning result of the 
systems that directly prepare for life, including as they do the 
cumulative and certain addition of the conditions essential 
to general application, in place of being the incidental by- 
product of some academic subject whose chief aim is a specific 
discipline, often not general within the academic field itself. 

Educational reform does not lie along the line of academic 
specialization required in common of all with a view to more 
thorough specific discipline. It permits aca- 
systemof demic specialization to vary with individuals, 
education and subordinates it to a direct preparation for 
must either jjf^ which collectively constitutes not merely a 
national body of isolated knowledge, but a system of 
life or be mutually helpful activities made certain by 
dominated j-gpetition, and independent and continuing 
in operation when formal instruction reaches 
its limit. Contrasted with this, it is a puerile scheme of 
education which takes general discipline for granted, and 
leaves direct preparation to academic outlines and individual 
apperception. The national system of education which is 
not compelling enough to reorganize and develop the knowl- 
edge and experience of a people is doomed to be conditioned 
and dominated by the popular ideals which it fails to trans- 
form. 

While each phase of life has its specific morality, general 
morality must be similarly organized. No "formal lessons" 
Education in morals and manners can answer here. Not 
for every j)j.^ Sheldon's moral selections from literature,^'^ 
direct prep- the virtues resulting from school routine, Mr. 
aration, Fairchild's illustrated talks on boy life,^^ the 
must be emphasis of moral subject matter in academic 
formal. Subjects, or, still less, Mr. White's biographical 



CULTURE DISCIPLINE AND DEMOCRACY 255 

course of study with its honesty in the third grade and 
industry in the fiftli.^^ Moral instruction means all of 
this and something more. The cardinal virtues must 
become the interrelated centers for definite systems of 
knowledge and activity in which each of the formal phases 
plays its properly proportioned part. So with industrial 
efficiency, as yet but partially analyzed, social service, and 
even avocation itself. As for religion, the church should 
not be a mere lecture room, but a school, and the Sunday- 
school, parochial school, or synagogue not merely a place for 
formal worship and purely academic instruction, but a 
training school for service in which rightly directed activities 
and essential relationships are made certain through repeti- 
tion, and become general through their continual re-enforce- 
ment by the conditions favorable to application. 

From the standpoint of school administration the funda- 
mental deduction from all this is that morality, health, 
industrial efficiency, social service, citizenship, ttpoj-mar* 
and avocation must be formally taught. This lessons and 
does not mean merely separate instruction in text-books 
each phase for a fixed number of recitation of^sucha 
periods in the weekly program — lessons in morals formal or 
and manners, catechetical instruction on the pedagogical 
duties of citizenship, or the academic drill on 
sacred things that Matthew Arnold insisted tended to breed 
irreverence.^^ Nor does it mean merely a logically organ- 
ized subject matter, courses, and text-books — histories of 
industry, civil governments, and elementary sociologies. 
It means formal instruction that will develop formal 
self-activity through direct preparation for life, a formal 
instruction of which formal recitation and formal text- 
books are but occasional parts. Its organization is broader 
and more systematic than that of the academic subjects 
which it in part includes. It constitutes the true correla- 
tion which makes the interrelationship of various branches a 
certain means to the useful co-ordination and subordination 
of their subject matter and activities with the ideals, the 



256 CULTURE DISCIPLINE AND DEMOCRACY 

vocabularies, the knowledge, and the habits which col- 
lectively and systematically form the training as a whole. 
Here, formal instruction, in the sense of organization, means 
reorganization of the course of study in its entirety for the 
cumulative development of a system in which co-ordination 
and subordination are based upon the relative worth of its 
constituent relationships from the standpoint of both 
direct and indirect furtherance of all phases of the educa- 
tional aim. With the subject-matter of each of the more 
many-sided academic branches so selected and organized, 
most recitations will become, in part at least, lessons in 
morality, industry, and citizenship, as well as in geography, 
history, or literature. For complete correlation and review 
for at least part of the training essential to some of the 
phases, separate recitations must be provided, and separate 
text-books and recitation periods may become necessary. 
The supreme need, however, is experimentation and research 
in universities and schools of education, with a view to 
providing the material directly and indirectly most useful 
not only in the training of citizens in general, but in that 
of teachers, text-book writers, and makers of courses of 
study. 

In the case of morality and religion, as already pointed 
out, the problem is one of selection, organization, and 
method rather than of analysis into definite ends. That is, 
the problem is pedagogical rather than moral or religious. 
Faith, hope, charity, reverence, obedience, meekness, 
moral traits, and Christian virtues must be taught as thor- 
oughly and cumulatively as the Jesuits drilled upon the 
classics and submission to authority. The school cannot 
Moral and become a church, but the church must become a 
religious school. In place of teaching all biblical passages 
^^^*t^b°" as if they were of equal worth, and leaving cor- 
come more relation to concordance and marginal notes; in 



truly place of annual repetitions of formal readings 

rorma . -^^ prayer-book and psalter, too isolated and 

mechanical to be cumulatively impressive; in place of vary- 



CULTURE DISCIPLINE AND DEMOCRACY 257 

ing and irregular attendance upon sermons whose topics and 
sequence are determined by individual judgment; if not in 
place of, at least in addition to, catechetical instruction in 
church dogma which men and women are permitted to 
forget, for children who do not understand, there should be 
substituted a cumulative and efficient course of study in 
moral and religious life in which not only all the relatively 
most useful ideals and habits are made sure, but are so 
continually re-enforced by interrelated knowledge and 
activities that ideals tend to become consistently dominant 
and habits to be invariable applied. For example, if meek- 
ness and "seeking not her own" are really essential Christian 
virtues, they should not be left to an occasional scriptural 
reading or eloquent ministerial appeal. Each necessary 
trait must be cumulatively developed from the standpoint 
of feeling, vocabulary, knowledge, many-sidedness of 
relationship, habit, and the conditions favorable to general 
discipline, until it becomes a part of individual life and 
character. With the masses less interested in theological 
disputation than has been the case since Chrysostom first 
plead for simple faith, and increasingly willing to serve 
their fellows through the many-sided points of contact 
with life afforded by the institutional church, sufficient time 
must be spared from systematic theology and higher criti- 
cism for priests and ministers of God to learn how to teach. 
To mere homiletics must be added the system of knowledge, 
ideals, and habits essential to right living, more complex than 
theology itself. If it is to be taught effectively to the 
masses still willing to come to school, the separate instruc- 
tion provided by a hundred creeds and tremendous resources 
in almost every community available for it must be ade- 
quately utilized. The failure so to utilize them constitutes 
the greatest waste in present-day education. 

The teaching of morality in school is steadily becoming 
more formal. Text-book instruction in temperance hygiene 
and lessons in the humane treatment of animals are re- 
quired by law in most schools of the United States. In 
17 



258 CULTURE DISCIPLINE AND DEMOCRACY 

France and Argentina moral instruction through text-book 
and formal recitation is an essential part of the system of 
public instruction. Nowhere, however, has moral instruction 
The teach- taken on the broadly systematic form necessary 
ing of to the cumulative organization of all moral 

morality m knowledoje and experience that can be furnished 

SCllOOl not 

yet formal or directed through the school. The "ethical 
in the peda- culture" schools have made the whole atmos- 
gogic sense, pj^gj-g ^f |-j^g school moral, as the parochial 
school has made it religious, but no scheme of organiza- 
tion as yet persistently repeats all fundamental moral ideas 
and activities in the relationships most useful to both the 
direct and indirect furtherance of morality, until not only 
habits of morality are firmly fixed, but the conditions 
favorable to their general application are cumulatively and 
certainly associated with them. What the parochial school 
is doing for dogma and formal religious observance must 
be done even more persistently and systematically through 
the organized co-operation of home, church, and school, for 
all that is specifiically essential to right living. 

Perhaps the most hopeful field for the early development 
of the cumulative system essential to direct furtherance is 
In h i ne ^^^^^ relating to health. Here, for physiology 
efforts to or- and anatomy is rapidly being substituted an 
ganize and organization which is definitely hygienic, sup- 
every-day plemented by the numerous hygienic activities 
life ensure which medical inspection, school nurses, bureaus 

pedagogic ^f health, medical and other hygienic associa- 
system. . 11. • i . . i 1 ^ 

tions are developmg m or about the school. 

Complete correlation and subordination has not yet taken 
place, the relative worth of related knowledge and activities 
has not yet been determined, but gradually there will be 
added to the formal lessons in hygiene in their formal place 
in the week's program a specifically related mass of knowl- 
edge and experience drawn from history, geography, litera- 
ture, sociology, current events, and the every-day life of 
pupils, community, and school that in its sum total will 



CULTURE DISCIPLINE AND DEMOCRACY 259 

be strong enough not only to influence self -activity, but to 
become a permanent and dominating part of it. 

Industrial efficiency, social service, citizenship, and avoca- 
tion are not so far along. They have not yet been even logic- 
ally analyzed into definite ends. Still less has the relative 
value of relationships directly furthering them, and essential 
in each to the five forms of educational self -activity, been 
determined. But their complexity has been revealed through 
the very conflict now existing between various means to their 
realization, and system will unify confficting parts as the test 
for relative worth correlates and subordinates them. 

To sum up, specific discipline, in the sense of system, 
can be differentiated into three distinct forms of organiza- 
tion: system which directly furthers the specific The test 
phases of the educational aim; system which in- compels^ 
directly furthers them through developing formal gyst^em^for 
self-activity; and academic system which fur- direct and 
thers each. Of these, the system which certainly ^5^^^®*^* 
furthers direct preparation includes and makes ^^^ 
certain the other two. It needs not only certain academic 
habits which are directly useful, but the specific system, 
relationships most favorable to mere remembrance, varying 
apperception, and general discipline in the field of each spe- 
cific aim. From the standpoint of general preparation, it 
needs for all learners the knowledge and the relationships 
that constitute the directly useful portions of all academic 
subjects; and from that of specialization it needs for most 
individuals, adequate knowledge of one or more branches as 
systematic wholes. Cumulative impression, mere remem- 
brance, varying apperception, and general discipline, in turn, 
demand as many-sided and certain a knowledge as possible 
of all academic subjects in their general relationships, regard- 
less of their direct usefulness. This indirectly useful system, 
specifically related to direct preparation through the condi- 
tions favorable to useful application in the various fields, con- 
stitutes with it, and the academic branches essential to each, 
a complete scheme of education whose most useful parts have 



26o CULTURE DISCIPLINE AND DEMOCRACY 

been determined by the test of relative worth, and made cer- 
tain not only through instruction, but through their many- 
sidedness, recurrence, and emotional appeal in life itself. 

4. Application oj the Test to Academic Organization 

Whether applied with a view to direct preparation or to 
formal self -activity, the test of relative worth organizes ideas 
^, and activities into at least partial academic sys- 

organizes tem. Where common school branches possess 
ideas and academic organization it is usually essential to 
fnto^at least ^^^^^ direct usefulness. Those principles and 
partial mechanical operations of arithmetic that survive 

academic ^^ tests of elimination and relative worth are 
interdependent and must be arithmetically organ- 
ized. Geographical and historical sequence and location, 
together with the topical development of their directly useful 
subject matter, are essential, both from the standpoint of 
direct furtherance and from that of remembrance, apper- 
ception, and application. Even hygiene follows such general 
anatomical and physiological system as is apparent from the 
learner's experience with his own body. 

On the other hand, where, as in the case of reading, writing, 
spelling, and language work, the direct usefulness of relation- 
Where ships is not dependent upon academic grouping 

direct or and order, but is purely pedagogical, readiness of 
indirect fur- remembrance and apperception demands logical 
does not organization of the relationships which the test 
demand of relative worth assigns to each stage of instruc- 
eaniz^ation ^^^^* ^^^^ i^, while the words to be recognized, 
pedagogical Spelled, or written, and combinations of words in 
method oral speech or written composition, may be se- 

lected without regard to their logical relationships, 
their logical grouping, at least in the sense of their association 
by essential similarities, is in itself pedagogical. Words 
from the same Latin or Greek root may be introduced at 
different points in the school course, but their etymological 
grouping, limited to those that are similar in spelling and 



CULTURE DISCIPLINE AND DEMOCRACY 261 

in meaning, constitutes a highly effective factor in spelling 
method. Similarly, correct forms of speech having a com- 
mon grammatical explanation are more readily mastered, 
if they are simultaneously or cumulatively taught together. 
Where the partial identity on which a particular logical 
grouping is based is comprehended by the learner and con- 
sciously kept before him, it becomes a memory or appercep- 
tion center. 

It should be clearly perceived, however, that from the 
standpoint of general education application of the test of 
relative worth not only ensures academic system, nptermina- 
but limits it. It is included only in so far as it is tion of rela- 
many-sided and frequently recurring, either in ti^® worth 
direct usefulness or in furthering some phase of ^^^ umits 
formal self -activity, and not as a means to the academic 
comprehension of a branch of knowledge as a orgamza- 
w^hole. For example, Joseph Payne was logical 
and scientific in attempting to teach children, through 
individual experimentation with the pile-driver, the inter- 
relationship of weight, gravitation, density, porosity, and so 
on, but violated the principles of relative worth, both from 
the standpoint of direct usefulness and of remembrance and 
apperception.^^ Neither the technique of the pile-driver, 
nor the particular combination of physical facts and prin- 
ciples necessary to explain its operation is many-sided or 
frequently recurring. A large part of the whole system of 
physics was involved in an introductory lesson, which, at 
best, represented a single application of a group of principles 
which must be separately mastered in the science itself, as in 
direct preparation, before they can be brought into relation- 
ship to each other. Application of the test of relative worth 
to the subject matter of the natural sciences results in a far 
more gradual and partial development of academic system. 
Thomas Hill's selection of the principle of oxidation is the 
sort of a first step tov/ard scientific system that direct prep- 
aration justifies.^^ Oxidation is m.any-sided, and frequently 
recurring in its relationship to combustion, candle, gas light. 



262 CULTURE DISCIPLINE AND DEMOCRACY 

and oil lamp; to rusting tin cup and tarnished doorknob or 
silver; to the purification of the blood through respiration. 
As a detail of direct preparation it is complete in itself. The 
next scientific fact or principle selected may be from physics 
or biology, and have no immediate academic relation to it. 

Yet, in the absence of academic system other than that 
involved in the teaching of useful principles as yet unrelated, 
So limited laboratory training can be effectively given and 
academic ' the specific discipline peculiar to scientific method 
organization developed. If in this fashion density has been 
cumulative added to gravity, and porosity to density, as of 
than com- sufficient many-sidedness and recurrence to figure 
prehensive. ^^ (iirect furtherance, they can finally be inter- 
related through experimentation with the pile-driver as one 
among many interesting applications, or more permanently 
combined in essential academic organization in so far as 
each general relationship involved is itself many-sided and 
recurring. 

The sum total of academic organization resulting from 

direct preparation, however, is limited and partial. Directly 

useful facts cannot be taught in isolation from 

Branches -^ other and yet be directly useful, but should 

differ in the -^ • i , i , . 

academic at the outset be associated through their common 

organization relations to the phase of the aim on account of 
ly^possibl^." whose furtherance they are selected. Each 
should be taught in academic relationships as soon 
as they become possible through the accumulation of directly 
useful material from the same academic subject, but, only in 
so far as academic relationships are either themselves directly 
useful or are indirectly useful through remembrance, ap- 
perception, and application. In arithmetic this academic 
organization begins at the very start. The interrelationship 
of the various mechanical operations is not only directly 
useful, but essential. In language work it develops far more 
gradually, keeping pace with the cumulative development of 
the habits necessary to correct, varied or expressive speech. 
Except in so far as form.al grammar contributes to this end, 



CULTURE DISCIPLINE AND DEMOCRACY 263 

it has no place among the required school subjects. The 
habit of logical analysis which justifies parsing even in the 
eyes of Matthew Arnold can be developed more usefully, 
retained more permanently, and applied more generally, if 
formed as one of the conditions favorable to the carrying 
over of directly useful relationships through the general 
discipline essential to each phase of direct preparation. On 
the other hand, it is precisely these conditions that ensure 
formal organization to history and geography. Even if their 
directly useful subject matter were not so inclusive as to ad- 
mit of topical classification which directly contributes to 
industry, citizenship, and other specific aims, it, in any event, 
furnishes highly useful remembrance or apperception centers, 
while general geographical and historical sequences and loca- 
tions peculiarly further remembrance, apperception, and, 
therefore, application. 

This is also true of literature and art. Partial academic 
organization based upon the relative worth of component 

relationships, both to direct furtherance and „,, ^ , .„ 
, / ' . . . . , The test will 

formal self-activity, is essential enough to be ensure dif- 

firmly memorized and retained by all learners at Cerent selec- 
each stage of instruction. orgaSfation 

In the elementary course of study the effect within the 
will probably be confined to the selection of di- elementary 
rectly useful material within the present common 
school branches, the modification of academic organization 
from the standpoint of the relative educational worth of 
relationships, and the reorganization and correlation of all 
subject matter and experience from the standpoint of direct 
furtherance, so far as it can be controlled by the school. 

In the high school and the college each subject required 

of all students must be similarly tested and reorganized, with 

the further probability of the addition to the j , • , 

required subjects of parts of other branches brandies, 

extensively enough drawn upon for the sake of essential 

direct furtherance to make academic organization ^f ^^J ^^^ .,1 

^ elective will 

aid both it and formal self-activity. Sociology, be required. 



264 CULTURE DISCIPLINE AND DEMOCRACY 

ethics, economics, political economy, civics, psychology, 
chemistry, physics, and biology, in so far as they are not 
already required branches, will in part become so. The 
point in the course of study at which each should be 
studied as a separate subject depends upon the amount of 
its subject matter found immediately and directly useful, and 
the relative direct and indirect usefulness of its organization 
as compared with that of other subjects. Where time avail- 
able for memorizing is not adequate for both direct prepara- 
tion and separate instruction in all useful subject matter 
that has reached the stage of accumulation in which more 
complete academic organization is possible and useful, rela- 
tive usefulness of organization also determines which branches 
shall be separately studied and which postponed. In any 
event, relationships selected from each will figure at every 
stage of advancement in cumulative organization, both di- 
rectly useful and academic. 

When, as America was first beginning to feel the Pesta- 
lozzian influence, Thomas Hill sought to reconcile psycho- 
logical and logical order in his "True Order of 
metho?"^* Studies," he believed that the necessary logical 
unlike ' sequence, in which the various branches follow 
cumulative ^^^^.j^ other as completed wholes, corresponds 
baseTupon with the natural order of the periods in which the 
mere abii- powers of the soul attain their maturity. It 
ity to com- follows that since "the powers of the soul are 
^^^ ^ * developed somewhat simultaneously," the vari- 
ous divisions of human knowledge should ''in every stage of 
common or liberal education keep proportionately pace 
with each; that the parent or teacher should watch the 
development of the child's mind and character, giving it the 
higher truth as soon as it is prepared for it; but remembering 
that one necessary part of the preparation is the study of 
lower truths. "^^ This "circle of human sciences," "bound 
together in an ascending spM^ — the obvious inspiration for 
the "spiral" or "concentric" order of instruction — vainly 
emphasizes the truth that partial academic organization and 



CULTURE DISCIPLINE AND DEMOCRACY 265 

interrelation is possible at each stage of instruction. Had its 
argument been comprehended and heeded, there would have 
been no disorganization of the various branches in their 
elementary stages, no number work, language lessons and 
nature study, which, in the effort at simplicity, presented 
ideas and activities in isolation from those on which de- 
pended not only their permanent usefulness, but their readiest 
mastery. Its fault lies in the assumption that each logical 
relationship should be developed just as soon as it can be 
understood. There are many relationships capable of im- 
mediate comprehension which lack immediate usefulness. 
Application of the test of relative worth, including at each 
stage of development immediateness of many-sidedness, 
recurrence, or emotional appeal, not only prevents the two 
extremes — academic organization that children cannot put 
to use and isolated knowledge and activities relatively use- 
less through lack of organization, but the misapplication of 
the spiral method which develops useless relationships at 
each stage of advancement merely because they can be 
understood. 

It also lays bare the relative inefficiency of the "incidental 
instruction" of some primary schools which, at its best in the 
hands of a great teacher, means systematic 

organization of material in direct relation to life "I^"^®^*^.! 
. , • 1 c 1 . instruction" 

without the aid of academic grouping. In the and arti- 

hands of the mass of culture-epochists, including ^"^1 corre- 
too often the Herbartians, it has meant temporary necessary, 
and artificial organization based upon some 
story of primitive life and nascent racial interest. At its 
worst it has meant the teaching of facts which are "simple" 
through their isolation from all system and organization 
other than immediate childish experience. If it was not for 
the fact that life itself outside the school inexorably super- 
imposes its relationships, classifications, and systems, the 
product of such "simple" instruction would be hopelessly 
simple children. 

In this application of the test of relative worth to the rela- 



266 CULTURE DISCIPLINE AND DEMOCRACY 

tionships which collectively form academic organization 
discipline is not forgotten. 

The cumulative organization directly useful and indirectly 
useful, of both experience and academic knowledge, is the 
Cumulative ^^^^ means to the continuity essential to disci- 
system pline, both specific and general. Each formal 
favorable branch develops so slowly that its useful habits 
specific and ^^^ relationships are singly formed and per- 
general sistently used at each successive stage of com- 
discipline. piexity before the next is reached. The relative 
certainty that an even less determined and systematic 
treatment has long given to the mechanical operations of 
arithmetic will be shared and exceeded by what is essentially 
useful in every branch. Through the partial organization 
of each, any intellectual or moral habit that it peculiarly 
furthers, generally useful in high degree, will be more cer- 
tainly developed than when the whole multitude of relation- 
ships involved in the mastery of the branch as a whole are 
developed with it. There is nothing in the habits of observa- 
tion, discrimination and interpretation, accuracy, perse- 
verance and open-mindedness resulting from laboratory 
practice that cannot be effectively gained by experimenta- 
tion illustrative of principles selected from various natural 
sciences, through applications that will continue to be useful 
in the every-day life of individuals who will not become 
scientific speciaKsts. There is no mathematical habit that 
cannot be more eft'ectively taught through the more per- 
sistent study of the parts of arithmetic, algebra, and geom- 
etry, generally and permanently useful to others than 
mathematicians, than through ^- the concentrated study of 
each as a whole, soon to be forgotten as a whole by the mass 
of students. Or, as Mr. Bain pointed out, there is no linguis- 
tic habit that cannot be more permanently taught through 
the cumulative appHcation of such parts of English grammar 
as are continually essential to a correct and graceful style, ^^ 
than by all the concentrated analysis of infiection and 
construction that Cicero, Pliny and Quintilian, and Ascham 



CULTURE DISCIPLINE AND DEMOCRACY 267 

and Sturm fastened upon the modern grammar school and 
college. 

It must not be forgotten, however, that no matter how 
limitation of subject matter within an academic branch may 
tend to ensure specific discipline, general disci- ^ , .. 
pline demands close correlation with direct prep- of academic 
aration. Habit that is based upon concentrated system 
instruction may be limited to the school, while preparation 
that based upon persistent usefulness in every- essential to 
day life is permanent and continuing. Whether ^f^!^f} 

(llSClI)llI16 

the habit is developed in directly useful experi- 
ence or through academic organization, it is direct prepara- 
tion, and direct preparation alone, that definitely relates it 
to the conditions favorable to its general and useful appli- 
cation. The pure science, the purety academic subject as a 
whole, is concerned only with itself. 

5. The Reorganization of the Course of Study Into a Dynamic 
System of Essentially Useful Relationships 
The effect of application of the test upon the course of 
study academically considered is less revolutionary as 
regards the branches included than in what they ^ggg change 
include, and its sharp discrimination between in branches 
what must be remembered by all in common and *^^°^ ^^ 
what can be left to a variable individual choice, include and 
The general academic organization of the arts make 
and science course will probably remain much ^^^ ^°* 
the same. In the high school and the college the effect will 
be similar, its most striking phase being a partial reversal 
of required and elective subjects. All students will be re- 
quired to master cumulatively the portions of psychology 
and ethics, literature and art, sociology, economics and 
political economy, elementary mathematics, and the natural 
sciences that are essential through high degree of both direct 
and indirect usefulness. Among these, general history, to- 
gether with literature and art, must early be organized as 
separate branches on account of the general historical and 



268 CULTURE DISCIPLINE AND DEMOCRACY 

geographical sequence and location essential as memory and 
apperception centers. Granted that their fundamental 
groupings are continually reviewed throughout the college 
course, the prevalent academic specialization in historical 
periods and epochs and in periods and phases of literature 
or art will doubtless continue on account of the almost limit- 
less historical and artistic details of approximately equal 
value from the standpoint of both service and culture. But 
the basis of selection will not continue to be merely scientific 
or aesthetic. In every historical period and in every phase 
of art, what is relatively most useful in direct furtherance of 
religion and morality, health, industry, social service, and 
citizenship will be included. The application of the same 
relative test to interrelationships as to details will probably 
prevent the directly useful material thus included from be- 
ing organized into such separate and specific branches as the 
history of hygiene or industry, or morality as taught in litera- 
ture and art. Many details have both directly and indirectly 
useful relationships which separate presentation of each phase 
of direct preparation would tend to overlook. But topical 
organization in furtherance of each specific general aim is 
essential within every historical period and phase of culture. 
Paralleling this organization into academic branches is 
the far more complicated system of direct preparation, of 
Academic which these topics within the academic branches 
organization are a part. The chief disturbance of the present 
paralleled college and high school program will be the cre- 
cumulative 2-tion of Specialties organized for direct useful- 
system of ness to each general phase of the educational aim, 
which it is a through which all formal subject matter is corre- 
lated with current experience, and cumulatively 
subordinated as part of the direct preparation which has 
gone before. The relative proportion of the formal pro- 
gram that direct preparation will consume can be determined 
only through application of the test of relative worth, to- 
gether with experimentation in actual instruction. It does 
not stop with the separate academic organization of re- 



CULTURE DISCIPLINE AND DEMOCRACY 269 

quired relationships in ethics, hygiene, economics, sociology, 
politics, and cesthetics, but will put them into their most 
useful and permanent association with a great system of 
ideals, facts, interrelationships, habits, and general disci- 
plines which has cumulatively resulted from selection, or- 
ganization, and instruction on the basis of relative usefulness 
from the beginning of formal instruction and throughout each 
successive stage of education. The simplest step that can 
be taken toward reorganization is the placing of the directly 
useful subjects just discussed among the required branches, 
and the application of the test of relative worth to them as 
to history, literature, and art in the selection and organiza- 
tion of their subject matter and the determination of the 
order in which they shall come in the course of study. 

As to mathematics and the natural sciences, if the test of 
relative worth is rigidly applied, the first year of the high 
school is likely to present a varied selection of Higher 
facts and principles in which arithmetic, algebra, mathemat- 
geometry, and all branches of natural science are ^^ ^necial- 
each in part represented. In mathematics this ist, but not 
will mean a year of required work, divided be- the general 
tween advanced arithmetic, the phases of algebra of^each 
most directly useful, and possibly two or three natural 
books of geometry. In science it will involve science, 
general or elementary science in the form of laboratory work 
in which the most directly and immediately useful facts 
and principles of all sciences are experimentally illustrated. 
Beyond the first high school year mathematics will be con- 
fined to specialization except for the time spent in review, 
while the application of the test of relative worth will de- 
termine the order in which the various natural sciences shall 
be taught. There will probably be enough directly useful 
material in each for it, when added to the general relation- 
ships useful as memory and apperception centers, to justify 
the requirement of each as a specific branch, though not in 
the exhaustive detail now characteristic of physics, chemistry, 
or biology. 



270 CULTURE DISCIPLINE AND DEMOCRACY 

After college entrance, the different environment and 
methods of instruction and the possible development of new 
Attempt at i^^<^ividual capacities or interests justify one last 
specializa- effort to redetermine or verify the line of special- 
tion in each ization which each individual has been following, 
field should '^^^ required subjects as redetermined by the 
be made test ensure contact at this stage of development 

after college ^^j^-j^ ^n general branches of knowledge with 
entrance* 

the exception of language, mathematics, and 

the laboratory phases of science. Mainly to test again 
mathematical ability, and only secondarily for the sake 
of a peculiar discipline, a term should be taken in either 
algebra or geometry. From the same standpoint, a term 
of laboratory work in some science should also be re- 
quired, as opposed to laboratory work in all for a partial 
and useless rediscovery of facts and principles. Adequate 
preparation for both will have been ensured through the 
persistent review throughout the high school course of the 
parts of mathematics and natural science essential through 
their high degree of general usefulness. * While as already 
demonstrated, there is no ground on which language can be 
required other than direct usefulness or broader appercep- 
tion in some special field, on this latter ground at least, 
mastery of one foreign language should with rare exceptions 
be exacted of all, if not through specialization previous to 
college entrance, at least to keep the way open at the close 
of the college course for unexpected phases of specialization 
that require foreign languages. Only students who show 
marked incapacity for foreign languages or certain to 
specialize in fields which do not require them, should be 
permitted to ignore them altogether. 

Finally, in order that the learner shall be continuously 
conscious of the relative usefulness of what he is being taught 
and correct in the judgments necessary to general discipline, 
he must cumulatively master parts of pedagogy and logic. 
They will probably be gradually developed, however, as 



CULTURE DISCIPLINE AND DEMOCRACY 271 

phases of direct preparation, rather than presented as separate 
branches. 

This forecast of the reorganized course of study is at best 
wholly theoretical and tentative. Valid determination and 
organization can come only through the actual application 
of the test of relative worth, from the standpoint of both 
direct and indirect furtherance of the educational aim. 
Probably no academic subject is generally useful in all of its 
parts. Mastery of the utmost detail, academic complete- 
ness, pure science, should not be required of all in a common 
field in the general school and college course. It belongs 
to specialization, and even there, rarely to vocational 
specialization except in the high sense of the advance- 
ment of science. 

6. Application of the Test to Specialization 

Distinction must be made between at least three kinds of 
specialization — first, exhaustive mastery; second, mastery 
of all that is essential to a specific vocation, xhree dis- 
whether liberal or industrial ; and third, mastery tinct kinds 
of an elective subject in furtherance of subjective °f ^?^~. 
adaptation that either takes the form of avocation variously 
or leads to vocation or exhaustive mastery. In affected by 
each form of specialization the application of *^® *®^** 
the test of relative usefulness determines the order of worth 
of both the relationships directly useful to the specialty, 
and those favorable to general discipline and other formal 
activity within its specific field of operation. In each the 
branch as a whole may or may not be included. In ex- 
haustive mastery alone is every detail of the branch as a whole 
or some part of it thoroughly mastered. Since at times both 
vocational and subjective specialization are exhaustive, it 
is easy to understand why the popular conception of special- 
ization is exhaustive knowledge. 

In each phase of specialization, the test of relative immedi- 
ate worth distinguishes between what is to be made definite 



272 CULTURE DISCIPLINE AND DEMOCRACY 

and certain, and what can be left to varying apperception. 

With the exception of exhaustive mastery, including the 

study of the exact sciences, it also determines the selection 

of the whole content. In the case of vocation or exhaustive 

mastery, involving the correlation of various branches, it 

further determines the order in which the essential subjects 

shall be mastered. Finally, with the exception of the exact 

sciences, it indicates the relationships that shall first be made 

certain, and, as in direct preparation in general, develops 

essential system. Even in the case of an exact science, it 

reveals the conditions favorable to general discipline within 

the science itself. 

These results of the test can be readily illustrated in each 

form of specialization. At first thought, determination of 

the relative usefulness of material to be exhaust- 

distin- ively mastered or included in an exact science 

guishes be- appears to be without practical application — all is 

tween the ^^ ^^ included and studied. But all the material of 
essential ... . . , 

and optional Specialization cannot be certainly memorized and 

material of permanently retained. The solution of particular 
tion"^^^^' theorems of geometry will be in part forgotten 
even by the mathematical specialist, to say noth- 
ing of the student who elects to study them. The essential 
thing is that both shall know where to apply them and where 
to find them. The successive steps in the solution of a par- 
ticular proposition are confined to it alone, and its applica- 
tions may be shown by the test to be few and rare. But the 
successive steps essential to the original solution of any prop- 
osition must be ground into the memory. For example, 
take not only the habit of successively combining the newly 
derived fact of an original demonstration with all given 
facts until the stimulus to mathematical judgment is identi- 
fied, but the groups of possible associations that each fre- 
quently recurring fact possesses. As already pointed out, 
the fact of equality of angles must be so mechanically 
associated with opposite vertical angles, alternate-interior 
and exterior-interior angles, right angles, angles whose sides 



CULTURE DISCIPLINE AND DEMOCRACY 273 

are parallel, superimposed angles, angles equal to a common 
angle, opposite angles at the base of an isosceles triangle, 
angles of an equilateral triangle, and corresponding angles of 
equal triangles, that they automatically suggest themselves 
in succession, or short-circuit the identification through the 
suggestion of some stimulus in the geometrical figure itself. 
Or, to take an example from physics, it is far more essential 
to have reduction in the volume of a gas certainly associated 
with pressure, reduced temperature, mixture of gases, and all 
other possible explanations, than to readily recall the mass of 
details which may be logically associated with each. Simi- 
larly, in the mastery of a language, the personal and tense 
endings of verbs, the signs for the case and declension of 
nouns should be mastered by the incessant and persistent 
drill that is often centered on a specific declension or conju- 
gation which has not an infinitesimal fraction of their many- 
sidedness and recurrence. 

Within the field of vocational specialization the need for 
the test is just as great. The National Confederation of 
State Medical Examining and Licensing Boards, at its 
meeting at St. Louis in 19 10, favorably discussed the proposi- 
tion to discriminate between the parts of materia medica 
essential to the general practitioner and the balance of its 
sum total which neither practitioner nor student can long 
retain.^^ The common practice of approving or rejecting the 
work of students in academic or professional examinations on 
questions involving the pettiest details that petty minds 
happen to unearth or remember is neither pedagogic nor 
scientific. The very necessity for thoroughness in specialty 
or profession makes discrimination essential. Such dog-and- 
the-shadow thoroughness, which loses the useful in vain 
snatches at the unattainable, must be sharply contrasted 
with the habit of exhaustive study or observation vitally 
necessary in selected instances of application. Here, as in 
direct furtherance in general, the test is not only necessary 
to determine the habit to be formed, but the instances to 
which it is to be applied. 
18 



274 CULTURE DISCIPLINE AND DEMOCRACY 

Indeed, the very habit of exhaustive observation furnishes 
excellent illustration of the test's determining not only- 
relative worth from the standpoint of discrim- 
determines ii^a-ting between essential and optional material, 
the order but the order in which essential material shall 
in which the j^g mastered. Since no habit is more highly 

6SS6tllld.l 

material of useful in natural science, more many-sided in its 
speciaiiza- application, and frequent in its useful recurrence, 
ma'^tl^red^^ it should be developed at the very start. This 
is why Agassiz kept returning the student of 
natural history again and again and again to the study of 
the same old fish when he first entered upon his course of 
training in the pioneer summer school down by the sea. 
Within the field of specialization, then, as in that of general 
furtherance, application of the test must determine the 
relationships so directly useful that they must be transformed 
into fixed groups and habits, the order in which they should 
be mastered, and, as a result, the specific system within the 
specialty whose certain and permanent mastery is essential 
to its direct usefulness and the general discipline which 
direct usefulness demands. Not only is this true of the 
material within a special branch, but of the order, correla- 
tion, and subordination of branches in the specialized field. 
Immediateness of many-sidedness and recurrence is what led 
the late Dean Spangler to regret the temporary necessity 
which made engineering students make up deficiencies in 
mathematics through summer study divorced from those 
phases of work in which it is applied. Efficiency not only 
demands that the various divisions of a specialty shall be 
taught in the order of their immediate usefulness, but that 
all essential interrelationships shall be similarly ordered. 

7. Specialization in Portions of Mathematics a Necessary 
Preparation Jor Many Vocations 

Whether for the sake of exhaustive mastery or vocational 
specialization, no subjects are more generally essential than 



CULTURE DISCIPLINE AND DEMOCRACY 275 

mathematics and the modern languages. The laws of every 
science are reducible to mathematical form and all scientific 
research must be mathematically interpreted. Applied 
mathematics dominates every phase of engineering and 
figures prominently in various other vocations. A large 
proportion of students will, therefore, engage in the special- 
ized study of various selections from its advanced phases, 
while a few will study it exhaustively, either from the stand- 
point of the rare vocations requiring completeness of 
mathematical knowledge, or to ensure the advancement of 
mathematical science. It has not as yet been fully enough 
realized that although mathematics is an exact science, 
its various branches are so little interdependent that the 
introductory parts of one can in most instances be thor- 
oughly mastered with little regard to others. Of course, 
where the application of the test of relative worth demands 
the mastery of some advanced portion of a particular branch, 
more general specialization becomes necessary. It is not 
impossible, however, that the result of the j^ ^ ^^ 
test for specialization in certain vocations, as limited, 
for direct preparation in general, may be a however, 
marked reduction in the amount of mathematics ^^^ various 
covered, which would ensure concentration mathe- 

quite as effectively as increasing the time de- p^^*^*^f^ 

brRuciics 
voted to mathematics in the school program. 

That is, with the limitation of advanced mathematical 
study to the specialist, and the consequent reduction of the 
recitation time wasted in exposing and correcting individual 
deficiency, the still further advantage of less material to 
master should ensure the time for the persistent review 
indispensable to certainty and permanence of mastery. 

At least two classes of individuals, not now certainly 
included among serious students of mathematics, should 
participate in this specialization — all advanced students 
who are at all likely to engage in scientific research, and all 
children in the elementary school who show marked arith- 
metical ability. The former should be compelled to exhibit 



276 CULTURE DISCIPLINE AND DEMOCRACY 

facility in statistical method before being admitted to 
candidacy for the doctor's or master's degree through any 
course involving statistical research; the latter should be 
given opportunity for specialization through admission to 
high school classes in mathematics, the organization of special 
classes centrally located, or individual instruction that will as 
effectively meet such cases as it has been here and there 
planned to meet exceptional deficiency. Whatever the stage 
of instruction, however, at which mathematical specializa- 
tion begins, it should be given by an instructor who will 
not only clearly explain the successive steps in the demon- 
stration of particular theorems and ensure the persistent 
repetition necessary to mathematical habit, but possess 
pedagogical training adequate to general discipline within 
the field of the special mathematical branch. 

8. Specialization in Some Modern Language Broadens Ap- 
perception, Is Helpful in the Majority of Vocations, 
and Desirable from the Standpoint of Avocation. 

While mastery of a foreign language is not essential to 
apperception in general, it tends to broaden it in specific 
fields. If, however, it is allowed to take the place of direct 
preparation, and absorbs an undue proportion of time in 
grammatical subtleties and mechanical mastery, language 
study may actually serve as a check upon more general 
apperception through the vernacular. For this its abstract 
discipline offers no compensation. There is nothing in it 
peculiar enough to justify specialization, useful enough to 
keep a man from exemplifying the popular saying that one 
can be a fool in a dozen different languages, or many-sided 
enough though derived from the dozen, to make him versatile, 
even in the sense of being all kinds of a fool. That some 
language — almost invariably a modern one — is directly 
useful in the majority of vocations, and that most languages, 
especially the classical, are desirable from the standpoint of 
avocation, is no reason why college entrance requirements 



CULTURE DISCIPLINE AND DEMOCRACY 277 

should insist upon a mechanical mastery of two languages 
during a four year high-school course at the expense of both 
more general apperception through the vernacular and more 
generally useful phases of direct preparation. Moreover, 
if a language is to broaden apperception at all, it should be 
studied so thoroughly that it can be read with both ease and 
pleasure, and, so far as many vocations are concerned and 
some phases of avocation, if it is to be directly useful at all, 
it must be unhesitatingly and correctly spoken and readily 
written. To ensure so complete a mastery, more than half 
the time is probably necessary for the teaching of one 
language than is usually devoted in the high school to that of 
two. Yet at least two languages are necessary in certain 
fields of specialization. To require no language for college 
entrance is simple justice to the occasional student who has 
no taste for a foreign language or no need for it in his voca- 
tion. To accept no more than one seems the only safeguard 
in the high school for direct preparation and other phases 
of specialization than language study. 

Two alternatives remain — to begin the study of one or 
more languages after college entrance, or to master one or 
more below the high school. From the stand- pj-actica- 
point of vocational specialization, the first bility of 

alternative is permissible, and, where specializa- fpeciahzmg 

1 . . . • • • , T 1 » • , "1 some 

tion comes late, at times mevitable. Agamst foreign lan- 

it is the wastefulness of mechanical work in a guage at an 

period of development where the ready use of ®^^^ ^^®' 

foreign languages opens the way to a broader scientific and 

aesthetic horizon. In favor of the second alternative is 

the old physiological argument of readier vocal adjustment 

to foreign language in childhood combined with the greater 

interest of children in the mechanical, the longer period 

available for the repetition of essentials and the formation 

of habits, and the immediate usefulness of foreign language, 

not only long before college is reached, but in the experience 

of those for whom college training is impossible. Two or 

three lessons a week throughout six or eight years of element- 



278 CULTURE DISCIPLINE AND DEMOCRACY 

ary school life, given at special centers, as in the case of 
manual training, or in a series of schools by special teachers, 
as in the case of music, should ensure the conquest of any 
language. This would not be required of any or permitted 
to those who needed the time for required work, but that an 
overwhelming majority of elementary school pupils have the 
taste and ability and can afford the time to specialize in 
language is plainly indicated by the results of private tutor- 
ing and of work in private schools. 

Where there is no local or individual reason for some other 
language, the relatively greater usefulness of German and 
Language French in a majority of vocations and in scientific 
chosen research with their broader literatures, cosmo- 

should politan use, and the close contact with America 

hidividual ^^ the peoples who speak them, make their 
and national election most probable, especially in small com- 
group. munities where it may be economically possible 

to have instruction in only one language for an hour or so 
daily by a tutor whose main support results from other 
occupation. Wherever possible, however, individual and 
group interests should be satisfied. The child attracted 
to Italian through the terrninology of musical technique, the 
pupils interested in Latin through their study of etymology 
should have immediate and continued opportunity for 
specialization. Above all, the amplest opportunity should 
be given the second generation of American immigrants to 
transform their contemptuous indifference to the rich spir- 
itual inheritance handed down to them through the broken 
speech of their parents and grandparents, into loving 
familiarity with the folklore, the literature, and song of their 
mother tongue. 

9. Even Specialization in Avocation Determined by the Test of 

Relative Worth 

Aside from the culture and experience essential to social 
life and common, at least in its many-sidedness, to all classes 



CULTURE DISCIPLINE AND DEMOCRACY 279 

of democratic society, avocation is not deter- Avocation 
minable by the test of relative worth. The ^^^^ onoor- 
employment of the leisure of individuals should tunity and 
be as variable as human nature and the en- °^ood. 
vironment in and through which it finds expression. But 
while innate tendencies on the one hand, and on the 
other individual interests acquired through varying ex- 
perience are the active selective agents, it does not follow 
that formal education is to play no part. If left to itself, 
individuality may leave its task undone or incomplete. 
The mass of individuals have no employment for solitary 
leisure, or lack the variety of employments that can be 
adapted to varying opportunity and varying moods. Their 
individuality either confines itself to the selection of a form 
of social enjoyment which they must find others to share, or 
is dependent upon one or two forms of active expression of 
which they tire or for which opportunity is often lacking. 
It therefore becomes the part of education to make sure 
that innate capacity and acquired interests determine forms 
of association at least varied enough to adapt themselves 
to periods of both activity and repose, and to be in part in- 
dependent of changing season and locality. In the great 
cities public amusements provided by professional perform- 
ers are so frequent and so varied that the temptation is to 
express individuality in merely choosing the particular way 
in which one will be a looker on. In solitude, in a simpler 
environment or out of funds, the looker on, deprived of his 
usual panorama, wdll suffer in idleness or find some form of 
mischief for idle hands to do. 

To train each individual to an adequate variety of avoca- 
tions suited to every state of mind and adapted to the 
commoner localities and to every sort of 

season and weather, is merely to extend to the f^dmdual 

. . . (. interest 

whole of education the Froebelian principle of determines 

counterbalancing possible evil by the develop- the field for 

ment of corresponding good. One should not 4^^"^^^^" 

only be taught to enjoy good reading, to discuss avocation. 



28o CULTURE DISCIPLINE AND DEMOCRACY 

and to reflect, but, if not to play well some musical instru- 
ment, to paint artistically, to carve skilfully, or to tinker 
usefully, at least to whittle or to scribble or to play solitaire. 
From a great variety of restful things, individuality must 
select some that will seem good when one is tired and alone. 
This is the moral side of fancy work and smoking. The 
first step toward checking the one or eliminating the other 
must be a greater variety of restful occupations. Gardening, 
observation of the birds and animals of the woods, collec- 
tions from plants and shells to fossils and Indian arrow 
heads, scientific experimentation, photography, translation, 
wood-chopping, fishing — it does not matter what, if avoca- 
tion is sufficiently varied to meet at all times and in all places 
the need for solitary enjoyment. 

Even here the test of relative worth selects in each avoca- 
tion the essential relationships whose mastery will be most 
Within the useful, and where natural tendency or acquired 
field many- interest fails to suggest the avocations which 

sidedness ^jj ^^ most absorbing, determines those to be 

and recur- 

rence also pursued for their many-sidedness, frequency of 

are deter- recurrence, and emotional appeal. In England 
mining. ^-^^ movement for introducing "fad" work into 

the school is directly designed to further avocation. In 
America as yet avocation has mainly been used to draw 
pupils together into congenial groups with a view to social- 
izing the school. 



10. Only the Test for Relative Worth Can Determine the Rela- 
tive Part to Be Played by General Education and Special- 
ization 

Only the general application of the test of relative worth 
and the scientific determination of the factors most effective 
in pedagogical method will determine the relative part that 
will be played by general education and specialization in the 
various stages of educational development. One thing 
only is sure, specialization will not only play an increasingly 



CULTURE DISCIPLINE AND DEMOCRACY 281 

important part, but must parallel general education in each, 
that is, it must receive from the beginning some share of the 
time that can be economically devoted to memorizing, except 
in the case of individuals who must use all their memorizing 
to make certain the essentials of direct preparation in general. 
With them specialization will confine itself to the var)dng 
apperception of the optional material which, since it cannot be 
memorized in definite relationships, potently contributes to 
the individuality of all. 



CHAPTER X 

THE CONTINUITY NECESSARY TO A CUMULATIVE AND DOMI- 
NATING SYSTEM TO BE ENSURED PRIMARILY THROUGH 
DIRECT PREPARATION AND, SECONDARILY, THROUGH 
SPECIALIZATION 

The present reaction from the extreme of the elective 
system and the new education is largely due to a growing 
Continuity realization that the most indispensable condition 
essential to to discipline is continuity. Habit in the sense 
both the q£ discipline must be permanent, and in the 
and domi- sense of general discipline must be dominant, 
nance of To both permanence and dominance continuity is 
disciphne. essential. The consequent assumption, however, 
that the only means to it is academic or vocational speciali- 
zation will bear some analysis. 

I. From the Standpoint of Continuity Habit Must Be Consid- 
ered in at Least Four Degrees of Complexity 
From the standpoint of continuity, habit must be consid- 
ered in at least four degrees of complexity: First, the 
simplest form of specific discipline is the simple 
fuT simple habit, distinct from any system, such as the habit 
habit, con- of putting on overshoes in rainy weather, the 
tinuity is habit of completing a particular sort of task 
through ex- when once it has been begun, the habit which 
perience or associates two and two with four. Here unbro- 
kQ°res^sion ^^^ sequences and continuity are the essential 
conditions. That is, not only must the conse- 
quences follow every time the stimulus is identified, but the 
stimulus must continually recur in individual experience. 
In the case of the most useful habits, whether their usefulness 
springs from many-sidedness or recurrence in a single rela- 

282 



CULTURE DISCIPLINE AND DEMOCRACY 283 

tionship, continuity is assured by experience itself. The 
function of education is merely to ensure their initial mastery. 
Continuity must be assured not so much for habit as for the 
cumulative impression which emotionalizes its stimulus. 
Where usefulness of a simple habit springs from high degree 
of sensational or emotional appeal and the continuity due to 
many-sidedness and recurrence is lacking, cumulative im- 
pression is the sole condition to general application. With 
many-sidedness and recurrence present, cumulative impres- 
sion is essential to specific discipline in the sense of simple 
habit only when it must overcome a habit with which it 
conflicts. Here continuity must be re-enforced by the cumu- 
lative force of feelings and ideals, which on the emotional 
side we call conscience and on the motor or positive side, will. 

Second, in relative simplicity of habit considered from the 
standpoint of continuity are the particular sequences or 
complexes of habits which constitute specific discipline in 
the sense of system. Here continuity of instruction is an 
indispensable condition to the gradation without which even 
initial mastery is impossible. A habit which is a condition 
to further system must become automatic before any attempt 
is made to master the next sequence of which it is a compo- 
nent part. It is not impossible that the operation of this 
law explains such periods of arrested development as Swift 
describes in liis "Mind in the Making."^^ Whether the com- 
plex process is a motor one or purely mental, further advance- 
ment becomes again and again impossible until all sequences 
and habits which have accumulated are reduced to mechan- 
ical operation. 

For continuity in this sense, either academic or vocational 
specialization ensures the time, but not necessarily the grada- 
tion. Both must be supplemented by peda- Specializa- 
gogical method. And even where pedagodcal tion ensures 

.1 I . 1 .^ ..., continuity, 

method is ensured, the contmuity of purely but only 

academic specialization is limited to the period pedagogical 

of formal instruction allotted to it unless it ™®*^°^ 

ensures 

continues as a form of vocation or avocation, gradation. 



284 CULTURE DISCIPLINE AND DEMOCRACY 

That is, academic specialization furthers the continuity 
essential to permanency of discipline only when it is a 
part of direct preparation for life. 

While academic specialization finds its limit at the close 
of the formal school course, vocational specialization finds 
. its at the beginning. Too early vocational 
speciaiiza- Specialization may defeat its own end not merely 
tion should through the shifting interests and abilities of 
v^o^cational developing individuality, but because of variable 
economic conditions which may make it impos- 
sible for an individual to continue in a specialization al- 
ready begun. From the standpoint of specialization per- 
manency is more likely to be ensured where it begins with 
academic specialization that may lead the way to many 
vocations, supplemented by all generally and directly useful 
subject matter that the specialty affords. It should, on the 
one side, find its continuity in vocational specialization, and 
on the other in academic relationships useful to life in general. 
It is direct preparation for life, of which vocational prepara- 
tion is but a part, that selecting each division and sub- 
division which is to be memorized on account of its many- 
sidedness and frequency of recurrence in every-day life, 
ensures a permanency more enduring than that of mere spe- 
cialization in school. 

Third, in the scale of complex habit considered from the 

standpoint of continuity is the system of habits and fixed 

. conditions favorable to general discipline. The 

of system Carrying over of a habit from the field in which 

favorable it is first developed to other fields in which it is 

to general useful is the first step toward continuity as the 
discipline ^ -^ 

through result of dominance as distmct from mere per- 

direct manence. Here indirect furtherance through 

preparation. i j • .. 

mere remembrance and varymg apperception, 

multiplication of vocabulary, and many-sidedness of knowl- 
edge — the very opposite of specialization — are as essential as 
habit and system themselves. Moreover, as already pointed 
out, general discipline has been too often neglected within the 



CULTURE DISCIPLINE AND DEMOCRACY 285 

specialty itself for a mere extension of the time devoted to a 
particular branch to ensure it. To be sure, pedagogical train- 
ing of the specialist may make it certain within the specialty. 
In direct preparation, however, general discipline is so indis- 
pensable that pedagogical training becomes compulsory. 
There can be not only no permanency and no dominance, but 
no system in the absence of pedagogically trained teachers 
and pedagogically determined experience, text-books, and 
courses of study. 

Fourth, and last in the scale of habit considered with a 
view to continuity, is the complete interrelation and subordi- 
nation of all relationships sufficiently useful to be memorized, 
into the great system of direct furtherance determined by 
their relative usefulness. This is so obviously beyond the 
field of mere academic specialization, and so completely in- 
clusive of specialization which becomes permanent as either 
vocation or avocation, that the futility of specialization alone 
needs no demonstration. Here is the true continuity not only 
of permanence assured through continually recurring habits 
and systems, but of dominance through assured cumulative 
subordination and concentration. Discussion of the pro- 
posed reform of discipline in the light of this analysis should 
lead to more valid conclusions than mere reaction toward the 
practices for which the exploded theory of "mental faculties" 
and "formal discipline" is responsible. 

2. The Impracticability of Vocational Specialization as a 
Means to Continuity 

When Dr. Dewey called attention to the absence in children 
of the "combined motivation" due in the adult to vocation 
which "prescribes the chief features of the acts to be per- 
formed, and secures, somewhat automatically as it were, 
appropriate and related modes of thinking, "^^"^ he possibly 
gives the clue to Dr. Judd which leads him to suggest that 
in high school and college continuity can be best attained 
through early and persistent vocational specialization. ^"^^ 



286 CULTURE DISCIPLINE AND DEMOCRACY 

If practicable, this solution of the difficulty would be but 
partial, associating as it does the persistence of discipline 
with the least social phase of individual development. But 
it is only occasionally practicable. Vocation is economically 
rather than subjectively determined. Subjective capacities 
and tendencies exclude occupations for which the individual 
is unfit more frequently than they determine the one for which 
he is pre-eminently qualified. While the absence of strong 
native retentiveness, incapacity to make fine discrimination 
in sound or vision, and lack of motor dexterity at once make 
particular vocations impossible, the presence of each capacity 
tends to open up the way to a variety of callings. Indeed, 
most of the moral and intellectual quahfications desirable 
in any one are necessary to the highest success of all. That is, 
if a man is not naturally unfitted for success in a particular 
calling, the capacities and the habits that will make him ex- 
ceptionally successful in it are with few exceptions identical 
with those that would have made him equally successful in 
others. The square peg must not get in a round hole, but 
there are usually plenty of square ones. 

3. More Likelihood of Continuity Through Academic Special- 
ization Strengthened by Varying Vocational Motive 

Academic specialization, which is primarily subjective, 
and may be partially or temporarily vocational, furnishes a 
stronger likelihood of continuity. Special ability in mathe- 
matics, natural science, the acquisition of foreign languages, 
composition, or drawing will show itself earlier than fitness 
for a particular occupation, and has the added advantage of 
leading to alternative or various occupations, rather than to 
a single one for which opportunity may not ofier or in which 
all interest may sooner or later be lost. Sole dependence for 
continuity can be placed on neither academic nor voca- 
tional interest. Witness the victim of a free elective system 
and the Jack of all trades. 

At each stage of education a limited amount of academic 
specialization should be compelled, strengthened by voca- 



CULTURE DISCIPLINE AND DEMOCRACY 287 

tional motive wherever possible. Academic specialization 
should be taken more seriously and determined upon after 
earnest and intelligent conference betv/een pupils or students, 
parents, and teachers, in so far as possible in the light of 
innate tendencies likely to form the basis for acquired 
interests. If interest does not become stronger or inability 
is shown, the specialty should be changed, even if the break 
should come on college entrance. To continue to compel a 
mistaken specialization for the sake of continuity would not 
only be unjust to the individual, but would ultimately defeat 
its own purpose. 

In itself, vocational motive in the sense of a love of some 
one vocation would in the case of most individuals be the 
least continuing of all. The boy longs one year changing 
to become a missionary or a dentist, and the next vocational 
is training to be a drum-major, a soldier, or an motive 
aeronaut. He is quite as capable of being a mer- tinuing than 
chant as a freshman, a journalist as a sophomore, vocational 
to finally emerge from college in doubt as to speciahza- 
whether he should be a lawyer or a mining engi- 
neer. But while the particular vocational aim varies, the 
incentive of vocation is and ought to be one of the most 
continuing of motives. As such, in all of its shifts and 
changes, it should be encouraged and so far as possible made 
to furnish additional interest in an academic continuity 
which usually must be otherwise determined. Instead of 
being scoffed at as illiberal during the college course, it should 
be prayed for. And wherever there is either an exceptionally 
persistent longing for some particular vocation not forbidden 
by native incapacity or economic conditions, or the necessity 
for an early selection of vocation as the result of economic 
compulsion, there should be adequate provision for vocational 
training. Therefore, trade schools, continuation schools, 
vocational high schools, professional schools open to those 
who are not college graduates, and, above all, ample opportun- 
ity for vocational courses within academic high school and 
college. Here, however, is the limit to vocational specializa- 



288 CULTURE DISCIPLINE AND DEMOCRACY 

tion as a means to continuity, and so limited it cannot fully 
perform the function of continuity. 

A truly pedagogical continuity is but a means to the perfect 
mastery of simple habits and sequences, which in turn become 
a part of increasingly complex but equally certain habits 
and sequences. It is reorganizing, correlative, cumulative, 
and brings about a concentration more useful and more 
permanent than that possible within some one branch of 
human knowledge. Academic continuity can at best ensure 
adequate knowledge and discipline within the branch itself 
and from the viewpoint of the branch. Hence, the inade- 
quacy, relative uselessness, and mutual contradictoriness 
of falsely Herbartian schemes of correlation that 
voca^ti^al**' would make geography, language, nature study, 
speciaiiza- and even number the basis for reorganization 
tion no true ^nd Concentration. Vocation is a truer basis, 
continuity. ^^^ ^^^Y ^^ ^ means to the comprehension of 
vocational life in general. Even in this sense 
it is as partial as in the other it is impracticable. To ensure 
continuity through vocational specialization alone would, on 
the one hand, make the college course utilitarian in the narrow 
and polemic sense, and, on the other, increase the difficulty 
which the vocational school already, but so unnecessarily, 
has in interesting its students in anything not directly voca- 
tional. 

So far as permanent and dominating interests are acquired 
through instruction, in distinction from or in addition to those 
due to innate capacities, they are dependent upon continuity 
Continuity ^^ experience or instruction. In the case of the 
made cer- majority of individuals, continuity in experience 
tain only cannot be counted upon to ensure the perma- 
preparation ^^^^e and dominance of the impressions, knowl- 
for all edge, ideals, and habits essential to direct and 

phases of indirect preparation for life. The reorganiza- 
tion and accumulation which continuity makes 
certain must be brought about with a view to preparation not 
for one, but for every phase of life. From the standpoint of 



CULTURE DISCIPLINE AND DEMOCRACY 289 

specific discipline, and such general discipline as is ensured 
for it, continuity in some special subject — it matters not 
what— is necessary, but cannot be compelled where it proves 
itself to be counter to natural aptitude or economically un- 
necessary. Even here the subject matter must be related 
to Hfe, or reorganization and systematic accumulation will be 
impossible. For any one basis of academically or vocation- 
ally specific continuity another can be substituted and often 
must be substituted. 

4. Continuity Practicable and at the Same Time Most Useful 
Only Through the Progressive and Cumulative Organiza- 
tion of the Material Most Directly Useful to All 
Continuity for habit in each of its four stages of complexity 
can be compelled only with subject matter which is essential 
to the mass of individuals both as individuals and as collect- 
ively constituting community and state. Here alone the 
individual cannot and must not choose. Here education, if 
necessary, must persist in the face of natural tendency, 
culture epochs, and var3dng interests and desires. Here 
common sequences and common habits are not only essential 
to direct preparation for life in its necessary phases, but to 
the most certain and useful general discipline, a democratic 
culture and vocational specialization itself. Here continu- 
ity must persist not through some formal course of instruc- 
tion, but through life — not for the sake of the specific disci- 
pline peculiar to some special branch of learning, but because 
reorganization, accumulation, concentration, and certainty 
of specific and general application are necessary to religion, 
morality, health, industrial efiiciency, social service, good 
citizenship, right social intercourse, and even the individual 
enjoyment of leisure. Even when the period is reached 
when vocational specialization becomes the most immediate 
aim, and some vocational course or institution adds to reor- 
ganization and accumulation from the standpoint of common 
and certain preparation for every phase of life, reorganization 
and accumulation from the standpoint of the one, the essen- 

19 



290 CULTURE DISCIPLINE AND DEMOCRACY 

tial continuity directly and indirectly useful from the stand- 
point of every phase, must not only persist but dominate, and 
such time as is necessary to its persistence and domination 
through useful selection, organization, and method should 
be determined by science and compelled by the state. Prob- 
ably no sacrifice of vocational efficiency will be necessary, 
but if it should, "social efficiency," in the guise of material 
"achievement," has not yet become the supreme aim of 
modern life.^°^ 

Finally, it has already been pointed out that in the case 
of the majority of individuals discipline and culture to be 
continuing must be related to life. If this be necessary 
for the mere retention of some specific discipline or culture, 
how indispensable it is in the case of discipline and culture 
which are not only to be retained, but to become a dominating 
force. With a view to continuity in this broader sense, rela- 
tionship of subject matter to life is necessary both in order 
that the subject matter of the specialized subject can be re- 
organized from the standpoint of what is essential to life, 
and in order that the every-day material of life shall be 
reorganized from the standpoint of the specialty. 

5. Early Opportunity for Specialization Should Re-enforce the 
Continuity Based on Direct Preparation for Life in Gen- 
eral with That Based Upon Subjective or Vocational 
Specialization 

While specialization, until some phase of it takes on voca- 
tional form, cannot be safely depended upon for continuity, 
just as the selected essential content required of all parallels 
it to the end, so should it parallel the common course of study 
from the beginning. 

If a foreign language, the higher mathematics, or a particu- 
lar natural science as a whole is not to be required of all at 
any point in the educational process, opportunity for special- 
ization in one or more of them should be afforded as early as 
special aptitudes and individual interests can be detected 
and encouraged. 



CULTURE DISCIPLINE AND DEMOCRACY 291 

As scientific selection of most essential content and deter- 
mination of most effective method fix and lessen the time nec- 
essary to mastery of the subject matter required in common 
of all, ample time will probably remain for the continuous 
study of some special subject or subjects not so required. 
At present, individual instruction in the elementary school 
has for its aim such adaptation of method to the individual as 
to compel mastery of an arbitrary course varying greatly 
with locality and the judgment of individual teachers and 
text-book makers, but not permitted to vary within a particu- 
lar school with the varying aptitudes of the pupils. The 
limitation of this phase of individual instruction to the essen- 
tial content will make possible mdividuality in the selection 
of some part of the course of study. Here continuity should 
be encouraged, but cannot be compelled as interests change 
and aptitudes lessen or fail. For the mental traits conspicu- 
ous in a particular individual are often different in various 
periods of development, and the mental traits required for a 
particular branch of study vary, both in the parts composing 
each stage of advancement and in the successive stages of 
advancement themselves. 

It must not be forgotten, however, that throughout the 

entire course of education individuality shows itself in the 

varying relationships in which various individuals Continuities 

apperceive subject matter which is not certainly of individual 

^ , , . 1 • 1 i- •. J experience 

and permanently memorized m dennite and dominate 

specific relationships. Whatever may be true academic 
of instruction, there is continuity in individual education, 
experience. More or less complex and permanent groups of 
ideas and activities accumulate and develop until they de- 
termine character and dominate life. They include the 
experience that results from formal instruction in so far as 
it is related to Ufe, always modifying and determining it and, 
in varying degrees and fashion with each individual, being 
modified and determined by it. Most schemes of education 
have had sufficient continuity in the narrower sense to in- 
clude new factors in it. Each branch of study, even though 



292 CULTURE DISCIPLINE AND DEMOCRACY 

imperfectly mastered and retained, becomes an apperceiving 
center. Information is at least generally classified and in 
part interpreted in an academic way. Some fundamental 
sequences and habits are incidentally carried over to life. 
While most is forgotten, at least impression remains and 
possibly a culture that too often holds itself afar. 

In the case of individuals for whom academic specializa- 
tion brings continuity or for whom vocational specialization 
is possible through instruction as well as through life, some 
specific phase of scholarship may become a dominating force. 
In the few, the love of liberal knowledge may be strong 
enough to isolate them from life as unproductive pedants, or 
inspire them to the high vocation of original research for the 
sake of knowledge. For the majority, however, the continu- 
ities of life make the educational system that least recognizes 
individuality, individual through the very absence of conunon 
and counterbalancing continuities of its own. 

6. The Specific Discipline Involved in Direct Preparation for 
Life Necessary Not Only to Make Education Certainly 
Useful, but to Increase the Probability of Usefulness of 
Every Form of Indirect Instruction 

The truly formal and educational system which the science 
of pedagogy alone can determine and make universal must 
dominate the continuities of incidental experience. Its aim 
is not independent and continuing self-activity, but inde- 
pendent and continuing self -activity that is useful. Instruc- 
tion furthers it both directly and indirectly — indirectly 
through impression, remembrance, apperception, and general 
discipHne, whose relationships vary with individuals and may 
or may not further the aim, and directly through a specific 
discipline which makes definite and certain the relationships 
potentially most useful, including the specific impression, 
remembrance, and apperception which tend to make the use- 
fulness of direct instruction most probable. If impressions 
are to- accumulate so as to most potentially re-enforce useful 
ideas and habits, they must have fixed emotional centers. 



CULTURE DISCIPLINE AND DEMOCRACY 293 

If partial remembrances are to form the basis for useful ap- 
perception, the relationships which constitute them must be 
predetermined. If habits are to have the greatest likeli- 
hood of application wherein they may be useful, the relation- 
ships necessary to the identification of these stimuli must 
be mechanically associated with them. If all ideas and ac- 
tivities held in mind by incidental and individual appercep- 
tion and retention are to be made the means to a many-sided- 
ness which furthers direct preparation for life, adds to a 
democratic culture, and constitutes the chief condition to 
useful general discipline, they must be associated with the 
basal contiguities which make useful inference and identifica- 
tion most probable. 

All the relationships just named are as essential to general 
culture and discipline as to the direct preparation for life 
of which they form a part. To them must be added the rela- 
tionships which specifically further in the most many-sided 
way and with most frequent recurrence each essential phase 
of life in general, and of the branches or vocations which con- 
stitute specialization. Those most essential to life in general 
are of primary importance, and with those essential both to 
direct and indirect instruction must be ensured, if necessary, 
at the sacrifice of those essential to specialized vocation or 
avocation. For even if "social efficiency" is adequately 
served, as occasionally it is, by a vocational skill or a fulness 
of avocation which involves exceptional service to the com- 
munity at the expense of citizenship, altruism, health, or even 
morality, the individual suffers irreparable wrong, and society, 
after all but an aggregate of individuals, loses in the many 
fields of service what it gains in the one. If in the present 
state of civilization life must still be sacrificed to citizenship 
and material prosperity, health to industry, and citizenship to 
trade or social intercourse, it need not and must not be so in 
school. 

Fortunately, the fewness of the relationships thus essenti- 
ally useful to all will, in the case of the majority of individuals, 
leave ample time for the memorizing and retention of those 



294 CULTURE DISCIPLINE AND DEMOCRACY 

essentially useful to academic or vocational specialization. 
The time necessary to memorizing this common content, 
however, greatly varies with native acquisitiveness and re- 
tentiveness, while the limited time daily effective for memori- 
zing and retention seems to remain fairly constant. Although 
it is likely that the greater time spent by some individuals 
in initial memorizing may be balanced by less time required 
for review, there is little doubt that in exceptional cases there 
will be little opportunity for specialization. In the case of 
the great mass of individuals, however, general education and 
specialization will parallel each other, and in each the funda- 
mental problem is the determination of the relationships 
which must be memorized and retained. In each they must 
become mechanical in their operation. In each, simple 
sequences and habits must be transformed into those that 
are increasingly complex. Impressions will re-enforce them. 
Partial concepts will form apperceiving centers for them, 
until through their many-sided and continually recurring 
relationships, supplemented by the habits necessary to their 
general application, they are carried over with constantly 
increasing frequency into the various fields in which they are 
useful. 

7. The "Old'' Education and the " New'' Complementary Parts 

of the Ideal Whole 

What general discipline demands is not abstract relation- 
ships, but relationships usefully general; not concentration 
upon one or two branches, but concentration upon a limited 
number of relationships; not remoteness from every-day life, 
but many-sidedness and continuity of relationship with 
what is most essential to life ; not continuity through special- 
ization alone, but through the domination and reorganiza- 
tion of individually apperceived experience, primarily and 
permanently by the common content most directly useful to 
all, and less persistently by the frequently changing voca- 
tional or academic specialty most directly useful to each 
individual. The mechanics of learning are not confined to 



CULTURE DISCIPLINE AND DEMOCRACY 295 

alphabets, multiplication tables, theorems and vocabularies, 
but include all specific relationships that a fully educated 
man must remember by and think with. Herbartian apper- 
ception and interest are not a substitute for mechanical 
repetition, but a necessary complement to it. The first step 
toward certainty of usefulness for ideas and activities, 
whether specific or general, is unvarying memorizing, accu- 
mulation, organization, and review of a few essential rela- 
tionships, and the second, varying apperception of each idea 
and activity in a thousand and one different relationships, 
including and emphasizing those which associate it, even 
though temporarily, with the essential content. It is in this 
sense that the old education, vdth its memory drill, and the 
new, with its apperception and interest, are but complement- 
ary parts of the ideal whole. 

The maximum time available for memorizing and reten- 
tion, whether expended wholly in general education with the 
few or in general education and specialization with the many, 
is determined by physiological and psychological conditions. 
The minimum time — probably well within this maximum, but 
necessarily within it — is determined by the number and com- 
plexity of the relationships so essential that they must be 
permanently retained. 

Over and above this maximum and minimum is a rela- 
tively greater length of time that is not effective for memor- 
izing and retention. Here apperception and individual 
interest have free play. Here individuality re- appercep- 

tains and interprets. By far the greater portion tionmustbe 

^ ,. r 1 • ^ dominated 

of the course of study consists of the optional by certainly 

material which may or may not be remembered, useful 

and which, if retained at all, will be retained in ^^^ ^^' 

relationships varying with individuals and determined by the 

mental content which happens to be dominant. It is here that 

the Herbartian five formal steps seek to ensure, direct and 

control individual apperception. But both in the formal 

recitation and in incidental experience, individuality will 

dominate, if definite and specific relationships, supremely 



296 CULTURE DISCIPLINE AND DEMOCRACY 

useful, have not been made certain and dominating through 
adequate and continuing repetition, accumulation, and 
application. All of the relatively less useful material of 
education must be presented as many-sidedly as possible, 
not merely in relation to life, but to them. While it will none 
the less, for the most part, be retained in other relationships, 
individual and uncontrolled, it is far more likely, on account 
of such useful presentation, to be recalled in some useful re- 
lationship or, however recalled, to serve through its temporary 
and uncertain many-sidedness as the means to useful infer- 
ence or application. An idea so presented may sink to the 
dead level of mere information, but is far more likely to 
serve through the many-sidedness thus made possible as a 
connecting link between the habits and sequences formed 
through specific discipline, and the fields of knowledge and 
experience in which they can be most usefully applied, than 
if it is presented in its academic relationships alone, or even 
in a many-sidedness not specifically useful. 

8. Continuity and Concentration Through Specialization Must 
Supplement Direct Preparation for Life in General and 
Be Related to It 
The solution, then, of the educational problem does not lie 
in reaction — in concentration and continuity through aca- 
demic and vocational specialization ; not in vocational schools 
that exclude culture and assume the continuity of the general 
education that precedes them; not in cultural institutions 
which, boasting of their lack of relationship to life, assume 
continuity for their subject matter after its formal study has 
ended. It rather Hes in the paralleling of general education 
and specialization, and the relating of each as fully as possible 
to life; in distinguishing in each between the material which 
is most useful through its many-sidedness and recurrence and 
that with useful relationships which are less many-sided and 
recurring; in the persistent and mechanical repetition of the 
relatively most useful material, both of general education and 
specialization, in the definite relationships which make it 



CULTURE DISCIPLINE AND DEMOCRACY 297 

most useful; in the continuity of instruction and effective 
pedagogical method that will primarily so organize the essen- 
tial material required in common of all as to make it the 
means both to a democratic culture and the useful accumu- 
lation and reorganization of all other experience, and, second- 
arily, so reorganize the essential material of specialization as 
to make it the means to a specialized culture and to the 
useful accumulation and reorganization of all experience 
useful within its peculiar field; in ensuring the conditions 
necessary to as general discipline as is possible and useful ; in 
so relating the material relatively less useful for both common 
education and specialization to that which is relatively most 
useful in each, as to make many-sidedness the connecting 
link between individual experience and discipline. 

To such a solution of the problem the method peculiar to 
a particular branch of knowledge is inadequate. Scientific 
method is an educational end, not a means, and is dependent 
upon pedagogical method for its effective development. Its 
organization has no other aim than that of the science of 
which it is a part. It may result in habits useful enough to be 
generally applied, but is unable of itself to ensure their 
general application in other fields. Except in The method 
so far as its relationships are themselves directly peculiar to 
useful, it ignores preparation for life. Mastery ^j-^nch ^f' 
of its method, however unpedagogically it is study an 
brought about, may result in an admirable mental educational 
discipline adequate to the discoveries and inven- ^j^^^^ ^ 
tions which advance the boundaries of human means to 
knowledge and the noble form of specialization education, 
which seeks knowledge for the sake of knowledge. But the 
usefulness of a branch of knowledge to the race through the 
specialist cannot determine its place in the course of study or 
compel its study regardless of its specific relationships. 
Whether from the standpoint of discipline or of direct prepa- 
ration for life, its usefulness to makind in general, to special- 
ists in other fields, and even to those who specialize in it 
without making it a life vocation, is dependent upon the 



298 CULTURE DISCIPLINE AND DEMOCRACY 

selection and organization of those of its relationships most 
directly useful in life in general or in the specialty. On them 
are dependent the continuity of its habits, the opportunities 
for their application, the extent to which it reorganizes every- 
day experience, as well as its more certain and specific useful- 
ness. To teach a subject for its disciplinary value alone is 
to defeat the disciplinary aim itself. Whether taught only 
in part in order that all material not directly useful to life 
in general may be excluded, or taught as a whole from the 
standpoint of vocational or academic specialization, the part 
directly useful to life in general or to vocation must be per- 
sistently related to every-day experience. Even where the 
organization peculiar to the branch as a whole and not so 
related is retained through formal instruction, it will remain, 
as John of Salisbury said of scholasticism, ''of itself apart," 
unapplied and useless as a reorganizing force. To the masses, 
chess, bridge whist, or the puzzle column of a Sunday news- 
paper would be equally remote from life and as truly disci- 
plinary. 

When religion, morals, health, general industrial efficiency, 
social service, and citizenship are taught through as specific 
relationships and complex an organization as mathematics 
and the languages, they will not only be as disciplinary in the 
old narrow sense, but general application of their more useful 
habits will be assured, and life and character dominated by the 
ideals of education and of Christian civilization. 

9. The Development of Education as a Science Necessary Both 
to Democracy and Christian Civilization 

To such efficient teaching of each phase of life required of 
all individuals in common and of each branch of knowledge 
as the subject of individual specialization, adequate pedagog- 
ical training is indispensable. It is, indeed, far more neces- 
sary that the specialist should be a teacher, than that the 
teacher should be a specialist. The great investigator should 
pass on his results and his methods to a group of students; 
the teacher needs to be kept alive by the spirit of research. 



CULTURE DISCIPLINE AND DEMOCRACY 299 

But no scholar should teach in ignorance of such results as 
the science of education has already achieved, and no other 
science should be regarded as a more sacred field for patient 
and persistent achievement. The civilization of one genera- 
tion has but narrowly completed its task when, through spe- 
cialist and recorded knowledge, it passes on to the next the 
spiritual inheritance of the race, together with its own addi- 
tion to it. The educational function of democracy and of mod- 
ern civilization is far broader. They must ensure to every 
individual those phases in this inheritance which will most 
certainly secure his individual well-being and that of society. 
Ample provision has been made for academic research and the 
perpetuation of its triumphs. The specialized scholarship of 
the future is secure. But as yet small provision has been 
made for the development of the science without which the 
educational aim cannot be realized for and through the masses, 
the immense sums spent in popular education will be rela- 
tively wasted and the only true civilization — the civiliza- 
tion of the whole of society — will be immeasurable retarded. 
While groups of experts provided by national governments 
are solving scientific and industrial problems in every known 
field of material progress, through a bUnd trust in the infalli- 
bility of scholarship these tremendous educational issues are 
left to academic disputation and individual or institutional 
solution. Surely the time cannot be much further delayed 
when, with national sanction and support, the men whose 
training and experience have best fitted them for the task 
of inductive educational research will consecrate their time 
and energy to the advancement of the science on which the 
future happiness of humanity most directly depends, and 
through which each individual can enter most fully into the 
rights and duties of democracy and civilization. 



REFERENCES 



1. For extract from Jeremy Bentham's "Chrestomathia" and criticism 

of his school program, see Joseph Payne, "Lectures on the Science 
and Art of Education," Willard Small, Boston, 1884, pp. 243-245. 

2. Joseph Payne, "Lectures on the Science and Art of Education," 

P- 253. 

3. Joseph Payne, "Lectures on the Science and Art of Education," 

pp. 264-274. 

4. See Sir Joshua Fitch, "Thomas and Matthew Arnold and Their 

Influence on English Education," Charles Scribner's Sons, New 
York, 1899, p. 37. 

5. W. T. Harris, Report of the U. S. Commissioner of Education, 1889- 

90, p. iiii; extract from an address given before the State 
Teachers' Association of Ohio in June, 1888. 

6. Joseph Payne, "Lectures on the Science and Art of Education," 

Willard Small, Boston, 1884, pp. 260-280. 

7. Alexander Bain, "Education as a Science," D. Appleton & Co., 

New York, 1902, Chapter IX, pp. 366-373. 

8. Questionnaire of New York City High School Teachers' Associa- 

tion. See 15. 

9. Henry S. Pritchett, Fifth Annual Report of the President and of the 

Treasurer of the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of 
Teaching, New York, 1910, pp. 69-73. 

10. Isaac J. Schwatt, "On the Curriculum of Mathematics," p. 11; 

paper read at the annual meeting of the Association of Mathemat- 
ical Teachers in New England, Boston, December 28, 1909. 
Reprinted from "Mathematics Teacher." 

11. W. H. Heck admirably summarizes these experiments in Chapter III 

of his "Mental Discipline," John Lane Co., New York, 191 1. 

12. "Laboratory Manual of Elementary Science," issued by the Board 

of Education of Pittsburgh, Pa., for use in its high schools, 191 1. 

13. See "The Musician," March, 191 2, pp. 223-233, "Some Develop- 

ments in Public School Music; Credits for Outside Study," 
Osbourne McConathy, Supervisor of Music in the Public Schools 
of Chelsea, Mass. 

14. See catalogue of University of Wisconsin, 1910-11, p. 476. 

15. "Articulation of High School and College," containing a "State- 

ment of the High School Teachers' Association and Opinions from 
College Presidents, Superintendents, and High School Principals," 
High School Teachers' Association, New York City, November, 
1910. 

300 



REFERENCES 301 

16. Dr. P. P. Claxton, now U. S. Commissioner of Education, has taken 

the first step toward such a unification of educational research 
through the Bureau by appointing the writer collaborator in the 
Division of Child Hygiene, with the authority to institute inquiry 
as to the present status of experimentation within the field of 
actual instruction and to further such experimentation through 
the Bureau. 

17. Andrew Fleming West, New York "Times" and Philadelphia "Public 

Ledger," September 23, 191 1. 

18. Theodore Roosevelt, "The Outlook," February 18, 1911, pp. 344- 

346, "A Noteworthy Project in Higher Education." 

19. Benjamin Rush, "Essays, Literary, Moral, and Philosophical," 

Thos. and Samuel F. Bradford, Philadelphia, 1798, p. 43. 

20. W. T. Harris, "Psychological Foundations of Education," D. Apple- 

ton & Co., New York, 1904, Chapter III, pp. 23-31. 

21. W. T. Harris, Report of U. S. Commissioner of Education, 1890-91, 

pp. 1048, 1049. 

22. Alexander Bain, "Education as a Science," p. 118. 

23. Oswald Kiilpe, "Outlines of Psychology," translated from the 

German (1893) by E. B. Titchener, Macmillan Co., New York, 
1895, pp. 171-177. 

24. W. H. Payne, "Contributions to the Science of Education," American 

Book Co., New York, Cincinnati, Chicago, 1886, pp. 57, 58. 

25. Andrew Fleming West, "Education and Intelligence," reprinted from 

the New York "Times" and Philadelphia "Public Ledger" of 
September 23, 191 1, Princeton, New Jersey, October, 191 1. 

26. John Russell's memoir in "Life and Remains of R. H. Quick," F. 

Storr, Macmillan Co., New York and London, 1899, p. 22. 

27. Gabriel Compayre, "Lectures on Pedagogy," translated from the 

French by W. H. Payne, D. C. Heath & Co., Boston, 1896, p. 448. 

28. Hugo Miinsterburg, "McClure's Magazine," April, 1904. 

29. Earl Barnes, "Studies in Education," Second Series, published by 

the author, Philadelphia, 1902, pp. 43-61. 

30. G. Stanley Hall, "The Contents of Children's Minds on Entering 

School," E. L. Kellog & Co., New York and Chicago, p. 28, 

31. Alexander Bain, "Education as a Science," p. 23. 

32. Franfois Rabelais, "Gargantua," Book I, Chapter XXIII. 

33. For a brief discussion of the "Five Formal Steps," see W. Rein, 

"Outlines of Pedagogics," translated from the German by G. C. 
and Ida J. Van Liew, E. L. Kellog & Co., New York and Chicago, 
1893, pp. 101-114. 

34. J. J. Findlay, "Principles of Class Teaching," Macmillan Co., 

London, 1902, p. 143. 

35. Sir Thomas Browne, " Religio Medici," Ticknor & Fields, Boston, 

1863. 

36. Reuben Post Halleck, "Psychology and Psychic Culture," American 

Book Co., New York, Cincinnati, Chicago, 1895, pp. 84, 85, 

37. Nicholas Murray Butler, "Meaning of Education," Macmillan Co., 

New York, 1905, pp. 76-84. 

38. Joseph Payne, "Lectures on the Science and Art of Education," pp. 

242-249. 



302 REFERENCES 

39. Herbert Spencer, "Education," D. Appleton & Co., New York, 

1906, Chapter I, "What Knowledge is of Most Worth?" pp. 74, 75. 

40. Alexander Bain, "Education as a Science," p. 367. 

41. Charles De Garmo, "Principles of Secondary Education: "The 

Studies," Macmillan Co., New York, 1907, pp. 30-34. 

42. Discussed by the writer at teachers' institute, Hazleton, Pa., 1909, 

and elsewhere. Emphasized in paper of Professor I. W. Howerth, 
before Society of College Teachers of Education, 191 1. 

43. Walter G. McMullin, "Grammar in Our Schools," "The Teacher," 

Philadelphia, September, 191 1. 

44. Discussion by William Gardner Hale in "A Symposium on Reform 

in Grammatical Nomenclature in the Study of the Languages" 
(part of the program of the Michigan Schoolmasters' Club, 
Ann Arbor, Michigan, April i, 191 1), "The School Review," 
University of Chicago Press, Vol. XIX, No. 9, November, 191 1, 
pp. 630-642. 

45. Alexander Bain, "Education as a Science," D. Appleton & Co., 

New York, 1902, pp. 171, 172. 

46. John Dewey, "How We Think," D. C. Heath & Co., Boston, 

1910. 

47. W. H. Heck, "Mental Discipline and Educational Values," John 

Lane Co., New York, 191 1, pp. 140-147. 

48. William James, "Talks on Psychology to Teachers," Henry Holt & 

Co., New York, 1910, p. 81. 

49. W. H. Heck, "Mental Discipline and Educational Values," pp. 146- 

148. (Here Professor Heck comments on the position taken by 
Bagley in his "Educative Process," 1905, pp. 216, 222, 223.) 

50. David Fordyce, "Dialogues Concerning Education," London, 1745, 

pp. 270, 271. 

51. John Dewey, "How We Think," D. C. Heath & Co., Boston, 1910, 

pp. 111-115. 

52. John Adams, "Herbartian Psychology Applied to Education," D. C. 

Heath & Co., Boston, 1906, Chapter VI, pp. 135-162. 

53. Thomas Arnold's own account of Rugby in the "Journal of Educa- 

tion," 1834, quoted by Sir Joshua Fitch, "Thomas and Matthew 
Arnold," p. 35. 

54. Alexander Bain, "Education as a Science," pp. 365-366. 

55. Alexander Bain, "Education as a Science," pp. 366-378. 

56. Report of American Subcommittee of the International Commission 

on the Teaching of Mathematics. 

57. Alexander Bain, "Education as a Science," pp. 152, 153. 

58. Thomas Hill, "True Order of Studies," G. P. Putnam's Sons, New 

York and London, 1894. 

59. Questionnaire of New York City High School Teachers' Associa- 

tion. See 15. 

60. W. G. Hale, in discussion referred to above. See 44. 

61. "The School Review," pp. 618, 619. Professor A. F. Kuersteiner's 

paper in the Symposium just referred to on "The Problem from 
the Standpoint of the Romance Languages: French." 

62. Discussion by C. R. Rounds in Symposium referred to above, 

"School Review," pp. 610-615. 



REFERENCES 303 

63. Thomas Hill, "The True Order of Studies," G. P. Putnam's Sons, 

New York and London, 1894, pp. 86-90. 

64. Sydney Smith, Review of R. L. Edgeworth's Essays on Professional 

Education, "Edinburgh Review," October, 1809, pp. 38-50. 

65. Thomas Hill, Oration before Phi-Beta-Kappa Society of Harvard, 

1858, p. 15. 

66. Benjamin Rush, "Essays, Literary, Moral, and Philosophical," 

Thos. and Samuel F. Bradford, Philadelphia, 1798, p. 6. 

67. Quotation from Franciscus Floridas in W. H. Woodward's "Deside- 

rius Erasmus Concerning the Aim and Method of Education," 
Cambridge, at University Press, 1904, p. 67. 

68. Sir Thomas More, "Utopia," translated in Henry Morley's "Ideal 

Commonwealths," George Routledge & Sons, London and 
New York, 1896, p. 114. 

69. C. B. Gilbert, in numerous addresses at teachers' institutes and 

elsewhere. 

70. Paul Hanus, "Educational Aims and Educational Values," Macmil- 

lan Co., New York, 1902, pp. 122-131. 

71. See course of study of the Wharton School of Finance and Commerce, 

University of Pennsylvania. 

72. W. T. Harris, Report of U. S. Commissioner of Education, 1892-93, 

p. 146. 

73. W. T. Harris, in Addresses and Proceedings of the National Educa- 

tion Association, 1889, "Art Education the True Industrial Edu- 
cation," pp. 647-655. 

74. Sir Joshua Fitch, "Thomas and Matthew Arnold," p. 185. 

75. "Protagoras of Plato," as translated in Paul Monroe's "Source Book 

of the History of Education," Macmillan Co., New York, 1906, 
p. 32. 

76. W. T. Harris, in the Report of the U. S. Commissioner of Education, 

1892-93, Vol. II, p. 1463. 

77. Sir Joshua Fitch, "Thomas and Matthew Arnold," p. 35. 

78. "Isocrates' Oration Against the Sophists," translated in Paul 

Monroe's "Source Book of the History of Education," Macmillan 
Co., New York, 1906, p. 94. 

79. Frank M. McMurry, "What Omissions are Advisable in the Present 

Course of Study, and What Should Be the Basis for the Same?" 
Addresses and Proceedings of the National Education Associa- 
tion, 1904, pp. 194-202. 

80. W. H. Pa3me, "Contributions to the Science of Education," 

American Book Co., New York, Cincinnati, Chicago, 1886, pp. 
50-56. 

81. Paul Hanus, "Educational Aims and Educational Values," Mac- 

millan Co., New York, 1902, pp. 29, 30. 

82. James A. McLellan and John Dewey, "The Psychology of Number," 

D. Appleton & Co., New York, 1898, pp. 23-34. 

83. Dr. W. P. Chancellor, Superintendent of City Schools, South 

Norwalk, Connecticut, submitted 20,000 words, taken from the 
New York "Times" and New York "Evening Post," to a com- 
tee of teachers, who selected from among them the most frequently 
recurring that were difficult to spell. 



304 REFERENCES 

84. J. E. Wallace Wallin, "Spelling Efficiency in Relation to Age, 

Grade, and Sex, and the Question of Transfer," Warwick & York, 
Baltimore, 191 1. 

85. Georg Kerschensteiner, "Education for Citizenship," Rand, McNally 

& Co., Chicago, London, New York, 191 1, p. 100. Translated 
from the German by A. J. Pressland for the Commercial Club of 
Chicago. 

86. Miss Frances Wister, "Syllabus of Civic Instruction," prepared for 

League of Good Citizenship, Philadelphia. See also Arthur W. 
Dunn, "The Community and the Citizen." 

87. Joseph Payne, "Lectures on the Science and Art of Education," 

pp. 335-384. 

88. Francis and H. L. Wayland, "A Memoir of the Life and Labors of 

Francis Wayland, D.D., LL.D.,"' Sheldon & Co., New York, 
1867 (two vols.). Vol. I, pp. 232-240. 

89. Nicholas Murray Butler, "The Meaning of Education," Mac- 

millan Co., New York, 1905, p. 79. 

90. Winthrop D. Sheldon, Vice-President of Girard College, "Educa- 

tion," Vol. XXVII, Nos. 4, 5, and 6, December, 1906, and 
January and February, 1907, The Palmer Co., Boston. "Sorne 
Practical Suggestions Toward a Program of Ethical Culture in 
Our Schools." 

91. Milton Fairchild's lessons in morals given through stereoscopic 

reproductions of photographs of incidents in real life illustrative 
of fundamental moral truths. National Institute for Moral 
Instruction, Baltimore, Maryland. 

92. James Terry White, "Character Lessons in American Biography," 

prepared for the Character Development League, Success Build- 
ing, New York, 1909. 

93. "Life and Remains of Rev. R. H. Quick," F. Storr, Macmillan Co., 

New York, 1899, p. 24. 

94. Joseph Payne, "Lectures on the Science and Art of Education," 

pp. 218-229. 

95. Thomas Hill, "The True Order of Studies," Chapter VII, pp. 65-70. 

96. Thomas Hill, "The True Order of Studies," pp. 149, 150- 

97. Alexander Bain, "Education as a Science," p. 368. 

98. Proceedings of the National Confederation of State Medical Ex- 

amining and Licensing Boards, Twentieth Annual Convention, 
St. Louis, 1910, pp. 35-43. Report of the Committe on Materia 
Medica. 

99. Edgar James Swift, "Mind in the Making," Charles Scribner's Sons, 

New York, 1908. 

100. Charles Hubbard Judd, "Individualism in the Choice of Studies," 

University of Chicago Magazine, March, 191 1. 
loi. W. C. Bagley, "Educational Values," Macmillan Co., New York, 
191 1, Chapter VII, pp. 107-116. 



ANALYTIC INDEX 



Academic concentration: Its emphasis for sake of formal discipline, 13, 14; 
decreasing concentration the first check to discipline, 14; present reaction 
toward it, 14, 15; reaction not the sole alternative, 15, 134; lessened amount 
of formal memorizing a second check, 15; neglect of pedagogic method, a 
third, 16; remoteness from every-day life, a fourth, 17; lessened confidence 
in formal discipline, 17; organized demand for direct preparation for life, 
iQ-23; true readjustment determined by science, 23, 24; premature spe- 
cialization hostile to culture and democracy, 27, 28; experience strong 
enough to dominate it, 191; its relative uselessness. Chap. IV, 1 10-135; 
small part of the true remedy for inadequate discipline, 112, 288; the old 
education and the new complementary, 194. See Formal subjects. Spe- 
cialization, and System. 

Adams, John: Analysis of observation, 102, Note 52. 

Adaptation, the power of: The recognition of a general stimulus in an un- 
usual situation, 92; instruction must not depend upon it, 92; as essential 
as application, 108; can result from the partial study of sciences, 108; the 
study of mathematics ill suited to develop it, 109. 

^Esthetic appreciation: Distinct from artistic, 114; a form of self-expression, 
145; possible to all, 145; requires time now devoted to drawing and paint- 
ing, 148; it,_ rather than drawing, essential to artistic production, 148; 
ready accessibihty of suitable material, 148; reading by note versus love 
of good music, 149; even poor singing useful, 149; development of natural 
musical taste,_ 149; history of music and art essential in the college course, 
151; memorizing names of great artists and their masterpieces, 153; sacrifice 
of aesthetic appreciation to artistic, 152; interference of other phases of in- 
struction, 1 51-156; impressive presentation of masterpieces, 154; juveniliz- 
ing of literature a check to the development of aesthetic taste, 154; inten- 
sive study of masterpieces another, 156; aesthetic enjoyment most useful 
through furtherance of other phases of direct preparation for life, 194. 
See Artistic expression. 

Algebra: See Mathematics. 

Amherst: Recommendations of class of 1885, 26, 161. 

Analysis and synthesis: Prof. Dewey's distinction, loi; analysis and syn- 
thesis a. condition to general discipline, 101-108; conditions favorable to 
analysis, 102; synthesis on recognition of parts of a composite stimulus, 
103, 109; analysis and synthesis confined to particular fields, 99, 100; 
ensuredin a variety of fields only by direct preparation for life, 105-107; 
its applicatipn impossible in fields whose details are unfamiliar, 103; sug- 
gested within the academic branches by the type of material ordinarily 
associated with it, 106; in direct preparation results in the stimulus in the 
face of _ conflicting suggestions, 106; and unassisted by concrete details 
helpful in the abstract subjects, 107 ; temporary interest a favorable condi- 
tion to it, 108; synthesis of the stimulus as a whole a check upon hasty 
inference, 108; drill in adaptation involved in scientific experimentation, 
108; demands mastery of no one science as a whole, 109; mathematics ill 
suited to develop adaptation or truthfulness, 109. 

Apperception: Distinction between varying apperception and specific disci- 
pline,_ 60. See Varying apperception, Mere remembrance. Cumulative im- 
pression, and Spe&ific and General discipline. 

20 305 



3o6 ANALYTIC INDEX 

Arithmetic: Its more concentrated study ensures adequate discipline, i, 
Note lo; not commonly taught through pedagogical method, 62; the most 
generally useful stimulus favorable to discipline, 15, 86; necessity of asso- 
ciating with it the terminology and experience essential in the most useful 
fields of application, gg, 100, 103; much mastery of subject matter in spe- 
cialized fields unnecessary and wasteful, 117, 118, 121; the most general 
stimulus the most useful, but the more concrete the more certain, 104, 105; 
mastery of mathematics of little aid to mere remembrance and varying 
apperception, 116-118, 207; number too general in its application to ensure 
many-sided associations, 118; arithmetic useful enough to be organized as an 
academic whole, 252, 262. See Mathematics. 

Arnold, Matthew: Responsible for school children reading masterpieces of 
literature as wholes, 155, Note 74; insistence that religious drill breeds 
irreverence, 255, Note g^. 

Arnold, Thos.: Attempt to associate the study of Latin with modern life, 
14, Note 4; appeal for the classics from this point of view, 115, 161, Notes 
53 and 77. 

Artistic expression: Not essential to the masses, 114, 144; possible only to 
the specialist, 114, 14s; unessential to general culture, 145; furthered at 
the expense of aesthetic appreciation and democratic culture, 145, 146, 150, 
151, 152; opportunity for the discovery of genius, ig6; recognition of artistic 
training given outside the school, 147. See Msthetic appreciation. 

Arts, fine: Ensure the emotional form essential to cumulative impression 
and favorable to general disciphne, gs, 114, 156-158; most useful when it 
furthers right living, ig4; the more aesthetic and emotional the immoral, 
the greater its harmfulness, 182; early organization of art material useful, 
221, 263, 267. 

Associations. See Relationships. 

Avocation: Adaptation of individual avocation to varying environment and 
mood, 27g; active as well as passive, 27g; the field for specialized avocation 
determined by individual interest, 270, 280; within the field many-sidedness 
and recurrence determining, 280. See Culture. 

Bagley, W, C: His experiments lessened confidence in formal discipline, 18; 
general discipline not a matter of course, 78; the emotional general idea as 
the chief condition to application, g3, Note 4g; his broad concept of "social 
efficiency," 2go, Note, loi. 

Bain, Alexander: Disciplinary value of Latin, 14, Note 7; memorizing the 
most exhaustive phase of mental work, 44, Note 31; classical study expends 
memory, 76, Note 40; his criticism of drawing, 8g, 102, Note 45; classical 
culture mainly possible through good translations, 115, Note 54; discipline 
from the study of Latin, not peculiar to it, 116, Note 55; cultural value of 
mathematics, 118, Note 57; transition from Latin and Greek grarnmar to 
English, 127; English grammar a step toward the mastery of a foreign one, 
266, Note 07. 

Bardeen, C. W.: His satirical example of artificial correlation, 51. 

Barnes, Earl: Prevalence of partial concepts, 41, Note 2g. 

Bentham, Jeremy: Proposed curriculum for the teaching of science, 12, 13, 
Note I. 

Berkeley, California: Recognition in its public schools of outside musical 
training, 20, 147, Note 13. 

Butler, Nicholas Murray: Distrust of "experience that stands alone," 62, 
Note 37; his protest against "hammering the facts home," 246, Note 8g. 

Carnegie foundation: Reaction toward academic concentration, 15, Note 9. 
Chelsea, Massachusetts: Recognition in its public schools of outside musical 
training, 20, 147, Note 13. 



ANALYTIC INDEX 



307 



Citizenship: Systematic civic training, 63, 64; its reorganization of every -day 
experience, 68, 6g; office of typical relationships, 55, 56; of the terminology 
of fields of application, 99; the habit of analysis, 105; operates in the face 
of opposing tendencies, 106; common culture essential to (democracy, 141, 
142, 144-147, 156-158; overemphasis of artistic training undemocratic', 
144-146; promotion dependent upon artistic skill doubly undemocratic, 
145; grammatical speech and a common love of good literature favorable 
to democracy, 146; ignorance of essential knowledge too severe a penalty 
for carelessness or incompetence, 171; its compulsory mastery, 171; in- 
adequacy of general moral habits, 226; analysis conditional to the de- 
termination of relative worth, 241-243; determination of the most useful 
general stimulus, 228-230; the cumulative system resulting from the test 
of relative worth, 249-251; includes much civil government, 251. See 
Chaps. IX and X. 

Civil Government: A subordinate phase of civic training, 40, 251. 

Combes' Conservatory of Music: Training of children to recognize great 
composers and their masterpieces, 151. 

Concentration: Compelled by the test of relative worth, 266, 267. See 
Academic concentration, Vocational specialization, Continuity, Chap. X, 
282-299; and of Dominance, 230-234, and Chap. IX, 237-281. 

Continuity: Its office defined, 282; essential to both specific and general 
disciphne, 61, 72, 82-85; often lacking in the "formal" or academic sub- 
jects after instruction ceases, 61, 72, 84; direct preparation for life ensures 
it, 62, 68, 72, 81-83, 84, 85; furthered by regularity of recurrence, 72; 
favored if habit is initially formed in the field in which it is to continue, 82; 
ensured through the cumulative system which results from the test of rela- 
tive worth, 266; primarily through direct preparation, secondarily through 
specialization, Chap. X, 182-299; continuity essential to the dominance of 
discipline, 282-285; assured for simple habit through experience and cumu- 
lative impression, 282; essential to gradation in mastery of system, 283; 
assured only through pedagogical method, 283; favored by early academic 
specialization, 284; dominance assured through direct preparation, 288- 
29o;_and not through vocational speciaHzation, 285; results from academic 
specialization with varying vocational motive, 286-2S8; early opportunity 
for specialization, 290; individual experience strong enough to dominate 
the merely academic, 291 ; but continuity through academic and vocational 
specialization must supplement that of direct preparation, 296. 

Course ofstudy, tentative conclusions concerning the: No requirement 
of subjects as wholes on disciplinary grounds alone, 74, 112, 123; its re- 
quired content limited to the most useful relationships selected from the 
whole range of knowledge and experience, 112, 123; its organization for 
both direct and indirect furtherance of the educational aim, 123; general 
education,_culture,?and specialization must parallel each other, 159, 172-178; 
mathematics largely left to the speciaHst, 123-126; the test of relative worth 
may result in a broader elementary course, 123, 124, Note 58; more thorough 
training through algebra and geometry as electives, 125, 126; requirement of 
particular foreign languages already abandoned, 126, 127; with no foreign 
language required, one or more should be thoroughly mastered by most 
students, 127, 128; more efficient work as a result, 128; tendency toward 
requiring one or more sciences, 130; the habits peculiar to laboratory ex- 
perimentation assured by the study of those sciences which are most di- 
rectly useful, 130, 131; with a broad elementary course in natural science, 
specialization possible in the college, 131, Note 63; increased representa- 
tion of subjects rich in humanistic content, 132; the use of selected portions 
of academic branches no menace to discipline, 132-134; the aim of the 
specialist completeness, 133; such completeness in elementary study 
hostile both to interest and discipline, 133; the remedy, selection within the 
various branches, 133; organization of selected subject matter academic 



3o8 ANALYTIC INDEX 

as well as for direct preparation, 134, 135: inadequacy of tests for the mere 
elimination of details, 179-190, Chap. VII; fundamental distinction be- 
tween essential and optional relationships, 165; an exact determination of 
relative worth unnecessary, 166, 167; local courses of study uniform in 
their essential relationships and relative usefulness of optional material, 
Chap. VI, 165-178; identity no menace to individuality, 168; ignorance of 
essential relationships too severe a penalty for carelessness or incom- 
petence, 171; their compulsory mastery, 171; efifect on the elementary 
course, a different selection of details and their reorganization for direct 
preparation, 267-269; on higher education, the requirement of essential 
parts of some branches now elective, 270; reorganization into a cumulative 
system of essentially useful relationships, 267-271; academic and directly 
useful organization should parallel each other, 268; all forecasts of course 
tentative, 271. See Direct preparation and System. 

Culture : Interdependence of culture and direct preparation for life, Chap. V, 
136-164; varying apperception of an essential relationship a means to useful 
culture, 97; culture not a distinct form of self-activity, 136; in itself a partial 
phase of direct preparation, 137; its essential factors, 137, 138; no longer 
confined to the leisure class, 139; modern culture so extensive as to make 
necessary selection and specialization, 28, 138, 139; specialization preceded 
by a common culture, 140; elimination of everything antagonistic to direct 
preparation, 140, 141; its furtherance of citizenship, 141; its relationship 
to vocation and other phases of direct preparation, 141; such relationship 
essential to democracy, 142; not dominantly vocational, 142; vocational 
specialization to be paralleled by general culture related to vocation, 
and all specialization by direct preparation, 143, 144, 159; continuity 
essential for culture, direct preparation in general, and specialization, 143, 
159; their optional content common, 176; overemphasis of artistic training 
an obstacle to democratic culture, 144, 145; an exclusively analytic study 
of literary technique another menace, 146; grammatical speech and com- 
position and love of good literature essential to democratic culture, 146; 
means to the development of a common aesthetic appreciation, 147-152; 
interference of other phases of instruction with aesthetic training, 152-156; a 
part of the cultural content involved in direct preparation and general 
discipHne, 156-158; culture dependent upon direct preparation, 158, 159; 
involves all phases of formal self-activity, 158, 159; only specialized classi- 
cal study adequate to culture, 160, 161; classical idioms and forms not 
essential to it, 160; the classics increasingly precious for the specialist, 161; 
reversal of the present relationship of the classics and ancient history, 161; 
the cultural material essential to all determined by the test of relative worth, 
162; exclusion of masses from higher education fatal both to individualism 
and democracy, 163, 164. 

Cumulative impression: Educational inadequacy of vague impression, 31, 32; 
its usefulness dependent on that of the centers to which it is related, 32, 36; 
not properly centered it may be harmful, 37, 38; most useful when centered 
about essential ideas, 39-41; the efficacy of emotional centers, 42; varying 
apperception rnay be hostile to cumulative impression, 52, 96; a highly 
favorable condition to general discipline, 93-96; mainly useful to counter- 
act conflicting tendencies, 93; David Fordyce's illustration of the extent 
to which it dominates character, 94, 95, Note 50; literature and the fine 
arts the chief means to emotional form, 95; emotional material lacking in 
the formal subjects, 113; its emotional appeal the chief measure of its 
relative worth, 191-194. 

Dayton, Ohio: Early use of phonograph to develop musical taste, 150. 
DeGarmo, Charles: His emphasis of "specific discipline," 77, Note 41. 
Dewey, John:_ His distinction between form and content overemphasized, 90; 
his definition of analysis and synthesis, loi, Note 51; misapplication of 



ANALYTIC INDEX 309 

analysis of the steps involved in forming number concept, 188, Note 82; 
the "motivation" due to vocation, 285, Note 100. 

Direct preparation for life: Conditions responsible for increased demand 
for it, 11-18; opposition to it has lessened efficiency of discipline, 17; more 
certain than general discipline, 24, 25; limited to vocation hostile to culture 
and democracy, 25; inadequate without general discipline, 29; all formal 
self-activity more useful when centered about directly useful ideas and 
habits, 32, 36-38, 50-54; direct preparation ensures certainty, system, and 
continuity, 63, 65, 74, 120-122; must reorganize every-day experience, 67- 
69; includes all essential academic organization, 74; requires analysis and 
synthesis in the face of conflicting suggestions, 106; best assures varying 
apperception, 120; makes certain general application in every-day life, 
121; does not compel the memorizing of the useless, 121; includes the specific 
associations essential to general discipline through the formal subject, 105, 
121; hence the most eflScient means to general discipHne, Chap. IV, 1 10-135; 
many-sidedness of essential ideas distracts from their mastery, but makes 
them dominant, 122; direct preparation includes part of the cultural con- 
tent, 156-158; early association of directly useful relationships with apper- 
ceiving centers, 202, 208; their determination by the test of relative worth, 
166, 239-245; relative worth only theoretically useful, 166, 239; the relative 
time devoted to each dependent upon difficulty of realization, 240; analysis 
of each phase a condition to the application of test, 241, 242; aided by effort 
to ensure the five phases of formal self-activity, 242, 243; the cumulative 
system of direct preparation distinguished from mere outlines, 215, 246; 
academic branches included in it only through parts determined by the 
test of relative worth, 251; the extent to which it involves formal lessons 
and recitations, 255; its cumulative organization illustrated for moraUty 
and health, 256-259; such organization makes certain both academic sys- 
tem and that essential to formal self-activity, 260-264, 292-294; reorganiza- 
tion for direct usefulness compelled by the test of relative worth, 259, 285; 
correlation of the resulting system with that essential to general discipline, 
267, 268, 286-289, 292, 294; continuity and dominance most certain 
through direct preparation, 284, 289; must be supplemented by subjective 
and vocational specialization, 296. See Chaps. IX and X. 

Discipline: See Formal, General, and Specific discipline. 

Drawing: Criticised by Alexander Bain, 89, 102, Note 45; its general study 
unessential to artistic production, 148. 

Educational research: See Research, educational. 

Elimination of details from the course of study: Inadequacy of tests for 
elimination, Chap. VII, 179-190; critique of Dr. McMurry's test, 179, 180; 
a practicable test applicable to essential and optional material, 181; neces- 
sity for further exclusion of material hostile to the educational aim, 181- 
183; the more aesthetic and emotional the immoral, the more dangerous, 182; 
elimination of everything hostile to good citizenship, 182; all that interests 
children in bloodshed, atavistic, 183; exclusion of all not useful to the 
majority of individuals, 183-186; determination of immediate relative 
worth of details ehminates specialized material, 186; elimination of all 
details effectively taught outside the school, 187-190; each institution hav- 
ing an educational function responsible for every phase of the aim, but not 
for the same details, 187, 188. See Relative worth of details. 

Emotional appeal as a factor in determining relative worth: The chief 
measure of cumulative impression, 191-194; cumulative impression and 
remembrance furthered by impressibility and readiness, 192; the form of 
appeal must be adapted to the relationship to be made impressive, 192; 
increased by the mere concreting of an emotional idea, 193; appeal must be 
in the useful relationship itself, 193; the emotional impression made by right 
activity should be utilized, 194. See Cumulative impression. 



3IO ANALYTIC INDEX 

English grammar: See Grammar. 

Essential relationships: Contrasted with optional, 165, 166; bearing of this 
contrast on the recitation, igS; certain memorizing limited to them, 166, 175; 
exact determination unnecessary, 166; the main uniformity in local courses 
of study, 167-169; their memorizing necessary to mastery of optional mate- 
rial, 176, 177; ignorance of them too severe a penalty for carelessness, 171; 
for the sake of both individual and state their mastery should be compelled, 
171; discipline, culture and direct preparation differ in the essential rela- 
tionships brought to bear upon a common optional material, 176, 177; 
vocational specialization and general education partly identical, 177; 
relative worth of essentials not dependent on readiness of mastery, 192; 
the abundance of essential relationships immediately useful, 196; the cumu- 
lative force that comes with their early mastery, 196; their cumulative 
associations a means to remember by, 197; their certain memorizing and 
persistent association of new material with them, 231; their efficiency de- 
pendent upon the usefulness of optional material, 197, 224, 231-233. 

Etymology: Etymological grouping of high value to mere remembrance, 207. 

Fairchild, Milton W.: His illustrated talks on morals, 254, Note 91. 

FiNDLAY, J. J.: Illustration of artificial and useless correlation, 51, Note 34. 

Five formal steps: Inadequate to useful concentration, 50; cannot ensure 
general application without specific discipline, 76, 77. 

FoRDYCE, David: Illustrates cumulative effect of emotional material, 94, 95, 
Note 50. 

Foreign language: Latin selected by Joseph Payne as means to discipline, 14; 
emphasized by Thomas Arnold and W. T. Harris for its relation to modern 
life, 14; Alexander Bain's critique of its disciplinary value, 14; his insistence 
that it expends the memory, 76, Note 40; limited subject matter of abstract 
subjects favorable to temporary certainty and system, 61; wasteful to 
study Latin for useful habits alone, 74, 80; lacking in the continuity essen- 
tial to permanent discipline, 61, 72, 73; in linguistic study analysis and 
synthesis suggested by Hnguistic material alone, 106; remembrance and 
varying apperception furthered by ready use of a foreign language, 115, 
224; ready use involves more adequate study than is ordinary, 115; reading 
of good translations adequate, 115, Note 54; the general discipline involved 
in the study of a foreign language not peculiar to it, 116; the requirement of 
particular languages in the general high school course economic rather than 
pedagogic, 127; no foreign language should be required, but most students 
should master one or more, 127, 170, 276-278; the result, more effective work, 
128; Latin and Greek as means to culture belong to specialization, 160, 161; 
classical forms and idioms not essential to general culture, 160; the classics 
an increasingly precious charge upon the specialist, 161; reversal of the 
present relationship of the classics and ancient history, 161; practicability 
of specialization in language at an early age, 277; choice should vary with 
individual and national group, 278. 

Formal discipline: Use of theory as defence against many-sided curriculum, 
13; present reaction toward academic concentration for sake of discipline, 
14, 15; contrasted with general discipline, 18; lessened confidence in theory, 
17, 18; superseded by formal self-activity, 33-35; so superseded, no longer 
the sole alternative to knowledge and culture, no. See Formal self-activity 
and Formal subjects. 

Formal self-activity: Distinction between direct and indirect furtherance 
of educational aim, 35, 36; analysis into its five phases, 33-35; Chap. II, 
30-78; educational aim not self-activity, but useful self-actiyity, 30-33; 
the fallacies of immediate and temporary self-activity, 30; 31, its pedagog- 
ical versus its psychological analysis, 33; comparative failure of the formal 
subjects to further any other form of it than specific discipline, Chap._ IV, 
1 10-135; summary of advantages for its furtherance possessed by direct 



ANALYTIC INDEX 311 

preparation for life, 120-122; the subject matter which furthers it deter- 
mined by the test of relative worth, Chap. VIII, 191-236. 
Formal subjects: Limited subject matter compels temporary certainty and 
system, 61, 72, 113; often lack continuity, 61, 72, 84; academic system as a 
whole does not carry over beyond its special field, 74, 80; wasteful to master 
useless knowledge and habits, 66, 74, 80; abstract subjects useful to many 
classes of specialists, 66, 67, 274-278; their method an educational end 
rather than a means, 297; in their study analysis and synthesis limited to 
a specific type of material, 106; this material often too concrete to aid in 
carrying analysis over, 107; their comparative uselessness to all formal self- 
activity except specific discipline. Chap. IV, 1 10-135; lacking in the emo- 
tional material favorable to cumulative impression, 113; too limited in 
subject matter to further mere remembrance and varying apperception, 
114; ready use of languages essential to varying apperception involves more 
adequate study than is usually given, 114, 115; good translations adequate 
from this point of view, 115; the general discipline involved in a foreign 
language not peculiar to it, 116, Note 55; mastery of mathematics of little 
aid to varying apperception, 116-119, Note 56; number too general in its 
application to recall many-sided associations, 118; exclusion from higher 
education for failure in the old formal subjects fatal to individualism and 
democracy, 163, 164. 

General discipline: Based on a general stimulus, 70; the useful stimulus 
neither too narrow nor too general, 70-74; continuity of habit essential, 72, 
82-85; continuity furthered by regularity of recurrence, 72; its operation 
limited by varying apperception and specific discipline, 75; the inadequacy 
of discipline without it, 29, 69, 70, Note 38; a "specific discipline" involves 
general disciphne within its own field, 77, 235, Note 41; habit always 
specific, but its stimulus may be general, 71; general discipline not a matter 
of course, 78; its extent dependent upon the occurrence of its stimulus, 79- 
82; the thoroughness of a "formal discipline" specific, 80; habit best formed 
in permanently useful fields, 82; determination of the extent to which 
application is useful, 82, 83; the conditions of general discipline identical for 
form and content, 90; conditions fully discussed in Chap. Ill, 79-139; 
continuity, the first, 83-85; the second, as general a stimulus as is useful, 
85-90; the third, permanent association with typical applications, 68, 90, 
91; the fourth, the habit of seeking applications, 91, 92; the fifth, emotional- 
izing of the general stimulus, 93, 96; the sixth, association with all possible 
other ideas and activities, 96-98; the seventh, association of the knowledge 
necessary to identification and application, 98-101; the eighth, the habit 
of analysis and synthesis, 101-108; only direct preparation for life ensures 
it for a variety of fields, 105-108; drill in adaptation as essential as persistent 
application, 92, 102, 108; mathematics ill-suited to develop it, 109; the 
advantages of direct preparation as a means to formal self-activity. Chap, 
IV, 69, 110-135, 120-122; dependence of general discipline upon culture, 
156-158; determination of the relationships most useful to it by relative 
worth, 225-236; each highly useful application of a stimulus needs the 
specific systems of conditions favorable to every other, 231; collectively 
they constitute a system distinct from academic, 232; abstract environment 
unfavorable to it, 232, 233; concrete assured in direct preparation for life, 
233; manual training as a means to general discipline, 234; general academic 
discipline involves relationships external to logical organization, 235, 236; 
furthered by correlation of academic system v/ith direct preparation, 236; 
the continuity and dominance of the conditions favorable to general disci- 
pline ensured only as part of direct preparation, 236. See General siimuhis. 

General stimulus: Basis for general discipline, 70, 77, 85-90; must be neither 
too narrow nor too general, 70-73; its occurrence determines the extent 
of general discipline, 79-82; habit tends to remain specific, 80; substitution 



312 ANALYTIC INDEX 

of the general stimulus for the specific, 8i, 87, 225; memorizing of the 
essential similarity in type studies in general form, 88; drawing presents 
too general a stimulus to observation, 89, Note 45; conditions favorable to 
application through a general stimulus, 90-109; the most general useful 
stimulus the most useful potentially, but the more concrete the more 
certain, 104. See General discipline and General terms. 

General terms: Their value as memory and apperceiving centers, 202; the 
most useful not necessarily taught by incidental experience, 203, 204; 
basis for their selection, 204, 205; their relatively small number, 206; See 
General stimulus. 

Genetic conditions: Determining, for optional material alone, 198, 199. 

Geography: Elimination of physiographical material, 185; the value of 
general geographical locations and sequences as memory and apperception 
centers, 208-210; the determination of the localities most useful as centers, 
203; their value to direct preparation, culture, and discipline, 217, 218; 
increasingly exact location necessary as knowledge of details increases, 220; 
the relative uselessness of detailed outlines, 88, 215; application of the test 
of relative worth to a geographical outline, 246-248; the true type study 
involves general form, 88; early organization of geographical material 
useful, 252, 263; specific apperception illustrated through natural products, 
58; lack of definite geographical knowledge, 59. 

Geometry: All stimuli occur in the most general form possible, 86; recognition 
of part of a complex stimulus must habitually be followed by synthesis, 103. 
See Mathematics. 

Gilbert, C. B.: Vocational specialization in elementary education hostile to 
democracy, 142, Note, 69. 

Grammar: Variation in grammatical nomenclature a bar to general discipline, 
86; grammatical classification useless for mere remembrance, 206, 207; 
language specifically suggests analysis, 106; grammatical organization limited 
in its furtherance of correct speech, 206; its analysis and synthesis suggested 
by a particular type of material, 106. 

Hale, W. G.: Movement to ensure uniformity in grammatical nomenclature, 
86, Note 44; his object ready carrying over of principles from one language 
to another, 129, Note 60. See Kuersteiner and Rounds. 

Hall, G. Stanley: His distrust of the cultural and instrumental value of 
elementary Latin, 115. 

Halleck, R. p.: Illustration of varying apperception, 58, Note 36. 

Hanus, Paul: The centering of vocational courses about a common arts and 
science course, 143, Note 70; his example of a teacher without an aim, 184, 
Note 81. 

Harris, W. T.: Emphasis of Latin as related to modern life, 14, Note 5; 
critique of oral instruction, 31, Note 21; opposition to college entrance 
requirements that prevent a public school education for leaders of thought, 
146, Note 72; his advocacy of drawing as essential to American industry, 
148, Note 73; and of classical form to comprehension of ancient hfe, 160, 
Note 76. 

Heck, W. H.: Critique of Professor Bagley's emotional general idea, 93, Note 
49; his emphasis of the distinction between form and content unnecessary 
for general discipline, 90, Note 47. 

Herbart, J. F.: Urges many-sidedness as only substitute for all knowledge 
possibly useful, 69; recognizes the inadequacy of specific discipline, 76, 77; 
"concentration" his antidote for incidental apperception, 50. 

Herb artianism : Helped weaken confidence in formal discipline, 14, 19; 
overemphasizes academic discipline, 71; five formal steps inadequate to 
useful concentration, 50, 295; "preparation" gives greater likelihood and 
usefulness to mere remembrance, 44; apperception includes varying apper- 
ception and discipline, 47; fails in not emphasizing specific discipline, 77, 



ANALYTIC INDEX 313 

Note 41; no analytic study of application, 78; general form essential to type 
studies, 88; the inadequacy of Herbartian application, go, 97, 216; artificial 
application unnecessary, 265; the relative uselessness of academic concen- 
tration, 288. 

Hill, Thomas: His argument in favor of leaving higher mathematics to the 
specialist, 123, Note 58; his similar position as to the natural sciences, 131, 
253, Note 63; his judgment as to the most valuable phase of language study, 
135; his illustration of elementary science teaching, 261, Note 95; defect in 
his "spiral method," 264, Note 96. 

History: System in the teaching of history dependent upon pedagogical 
method, 62; value of general historical locations and sequences as memory 
and apperceiving centers, 208-210; the determination of the periods most 
useful as memory centers, 203; their value to direct preparation, culture, 
and discipline, 217; increasingly exact location necessary as knowledge of 
details increases, 220; the relative uselessness of detailed outlines, 88, 215; 
the true type study involves general form, 88; historical text-books and local 
courses need be only partly identical, 168; elimination of all material 
hostile to citizenship, 182, 183, or useful only to the specialist, 185; many 
directly useful historical associations not useful to apperception, 214; 
but early organization of historical material useful, 252, 263; present 
relation of ancient history and the classics must be reversed, 161; lack of 
definite historical knowledge, 59. 

HowERTH, I, W.: Calls attention to the fundamental problem of general disci- 
pline, 79, Note 42. 

Hygiene: Analyzed into definite ends, 258. 

Imitation: Sometimes a necessary means to self-activity, 20. 

Immediacy of usefulness as a phase of the test for relative worth: De- 
termining for stage at which useful relationships shall be taught, 195; 
except in the case of essential relationships, 196; optional material must be 
immediately many-sided and recurring, 201; comprehension and interest 
reducible to immediacy, 180; the test of immediacy makes unnecessary 
artificial correlation and misapplication of the "spiral method," 264. 
See Relative ivorth. 

Impression: See Cumulative impression. 

Indirect preparation for life: Too economical to ignore, 29, See Formal 
self -activity. 

Individuality: Assured in elementary course by emphasis of optional material, 
168, 169; and by adequate provision for early specialization, 147; dis- 
covery of genius through the art work essential for all, 146, 147. 

Initial remembrance: See Mere remembrance. 

Interest: Cumulative impression its formal phase, 31-40; its variable associa- 
tion through mere remembrance and varying apperception, 39; dependent 
upon method and organization, 180, 194; degree of inherent sensation and 
emotion a fundamental measure of relative worth, iii; genetic conditions 
determining only for optional material, 198, 199; interest atavistic if in 
phases of primitive life hostile to educational aim, 182, 183, 192. See 
Cumulative impression, Mere remembrance, Varying apperception, and 
Relative worth of relationships. 

Isocrates: His view of the subjective limitations to training, 164, Note 78. 

Jacotot: Memorizing a specific passage as a basis for the assimilation of all 
related knowledge, 245, Note 87. 

James, William: In his "Talks to Teachers" made application too dependent 
upon the power of adaptation, 92, Note 48; "sagacity" makes possible 
identification in an unusual environment, 102. 

JuDD, Charles H.: His advocacy of continuity through vocational specializa- 
tion, 185, Note 100. 



314 ANALYTIC INDEX 

KuERSTEiNER, A. F.: General terminology less readily applied by school children, 

129, Note 61. 
KuLPE, Oswald: Psychological basis for impression, 40, Note 23. 

Latin. See Foreign language. 

Life, direct preparation for. See Direct preparation for life. 

Literature: Ensures the emotional form necessary to cumulative impression, 
95, 114, 156-158; the more aesthetic and emotional an immoral idea, the 
greater its harmfulness, 182; early organization of literary material useful, 
221, 263, 267. 

Lowell, A. L.: Reaction toward academic concentration at Harvard, 15. 

Mathematics: Limited subject matter favorable to temporary certainty and 
system, 61, 72, 113; Professor Schwatt's plea for certainty and continuity 
through concentration, 15, 135, Note 10; except for the specialist, mathe- 
matjcs^ lacking in continuity, 61, 73; its study wasteful if for general 
discipline alone, 66, 74, 80; pedagogical method necessary, 85; interest in 
subject matter not always carried over to a mathematical process, 93, 96; 
special vocabulary necessary to mathematical judgment, 99; the limited 
amount of concrete knowledge mathematically useful, 100; analysis and 
synthesis as means to mathematical judgment, 103, 104; suggested by 
mathematical material alone, 105; mathematics ill-suited to develop adap- 
tation or truthfulness, 109; of Httle aid to varying apperception, 116-119; 
speciaHzed application of its principles independent of school work, 117, 118; 
number too general in its application to recall many-sided associations, 118; 
the greater part of mathematics left to the specialist, 123-126, 274-276; 
a broader elementary course, 123, Note 58; algebra and geometry no longer 
required as wholes, 124; hence more thorough training for those who elect 
them, 125; a last attempt at specialization in first college year, 270; mathe- 
matical specialization early in school life, 274-278. 

McMuLLiN, Walter G.: His investigation of variation in grammatical 
terminology, 86, Note 43. 

McMuRRY, Dr. Frank: Critique of his test for elimination, 179, 180, Note 79. 

Memorizing: Reaction against it hurtful to discipline, 15, 16; all mechanical 
mernorizing not hostile to self-activity, 16, 31; the general usefulness of 
specific discipline emphasizes mechanical memorizing, 75, 105; the new edu- 
cation does not demand less memorizing than the old, but the memorizing 
of essential relationships, 75, 165, 292-294; limited time available makes 
their determination fundamental, 166, 167; and excludes specialization on 
disciplinary grounds alone, 178; material to be memorized largely uniform 
for local courses of study, 167-169; the certain memorizing of essential 
relationships conditions the mastery of optional, 169, 170; necessary to in- 
tellectual and moral freedom, 237. 

Mere remembrance: Based on partial concepts, 40-47; all knowledge cannot 
be specific and adequate, 41; partial concepts the germs of mental growth, 
42, 43; they should be taught and tested for, 43, 44; no menace to exact 
knowledge, 43, 44; mere retention useful, 45; made most useful through 
instruction, 45, 46; many-sidedness essential in the college, 46, 47; a condi- 
tion to general discipline, 96-98; limited furtherance of mere remembrance 
through the formal subjects, 113-119, 213; aided by ready use of a foreign 
language, 114; ready use involves adequate mastery, 115; good translations 
adequate from this point of view, 115, 224; determination of relative useful- 
ness to mere remembrance, 195-213; furthered by partial concepts of essen- 
tial content, 196, 197; and by optional materia! immediately many-sided and 
recurring, 197; words its most useful material, 200-213; the value of note- 
taking, 200; the value of general ideas, 203; general historical and geo- 
graphical locations useful as both memory and apperception centers, 202, 
203, 208, 209; grammatical classification and number useless as centers. 



ANALYTIC INDEX 315 

206, 207; etymological grouping of high value, 207, 208; stories as centers 
for all school work useful to mere remembrance alone, 210; much reading 
an aid to mere remembrance, 155, 211; superfluous spelling an obstacle to 
the development of vocabulary, 211, 212. 

Method. See Pedagogical and method. 

Modern Language Association of America: Movement to ensure uni- 
formity in grammatical nomenclature, 86, Note 44. 

Moral training: Must be formal in the sense of pedagogic system, 256-258; 
such system results from the test of relative worth, 259; it must dominate 
life, 69; "general moral habits" inadequate, 226; its ideas and habits must 
have a general stimulus, 70; importance of typical examples, 55, gi; lack 
of definite moral and religious knowledge, 59; even partial religious concepts 
should be specific, 59; necessity for emotionalizing moral ideas, 94-96; for 
making them many-sided in association, 97; analysis associated with 
specific fields of appliction, 105; operates in the face of opposing tendencies, 
106; application of the test of relative worth illustrated through obedience, 
228-230; the necessity of every type of instruction to moral and religious 
training, 187, 188; varying apperception of a stimulus to moral action, in, 
112; analysis and synthesis in the presence of conflicting suggestions, 106, 
107; moral training requires the cumulative re-enforcement of a great 
intellectual, emotional, and motor system, 225, 233; formal analysis rela- 
tively complete for morality and religion, 244; pedagogical analysis still 
lacking, 244. See Chaps. IX and X. 

More, Sir Thomas: Insistence upon democratic culture, 139, Note 68. 

Moving pictures: A means to aesthetic training, 148. 

Music: Undemocratic if appreciation is sacrificed to a vain effort at expression, 
145; love of music independent of reading by note, 149; even mediocre sing- 
ing useful, 149; avocation must not be sacrificed to artistic skill, 150; the 
phonograph effective for the development of musical taste, 150; other 
means available, 151. 

Natural science: All details must not serve as stimuli to observation and 
analysis, 70, 71; but only specific stimuli, 68, 81-83; not recognizable in 
fields whose details are unfamiliar, loi, 102; analysis and synthesis suggested 
by the type of material ordinarily associated with them, 106; drill in 
application involves scientific experimentation, 108; but not mastery of 
any one science as a whole, 108, 109; the tendency toward requiring one or 
more sciences without specifying which, 130; the formation of scientific 
habits assured by study of the most directly useful parts of all sciences, 130, 
131; Thomas Hill's argument for a broader elementary course, 131; in 
local courses and various text-books only essential facts and principles of 
elementary science need be identical, 167, 168; organization about useful 
facts and principles, 252, 253, 267-271; necessity for eliminating details 
useful only to the specialist, 181, 183-186; Joseph Payne's attempt to 
teach physics through the pile-driver, 261; Thomas Hill's illustration leads 
to useful system, 261. 

New York High School Teachers' Association, Questionnaire of: Indica- 
tive of tendency toward educational readjustment,|2i-23. Note 15; its query 
as to whether one foreign language cannot be substituted for the two now 
required for college entrance, 22, 127. 

Optional relationships: Contrasted with essential, 165, 166; bearing of this 
distinction upon the recitation, 198; exact determination of their relative 
worth unnecessary, 167; local courses of study therefore identical in the 
relative usefulness of their optional relationships, 167-169; training of teach- 
ers to teach them and to test for them, 169; their mastery conditioned by 
that of essential relationships, 169, 170; the means to subjective speciali- 
zation, 172, 173; instruction must select the parts of personal experience to 



3i6 ANALYTIC INDEX 

which they are related, 218; largely identical for direct preparation, culture, 
general discipline, and specialization, 176; more useful through readiness 
of mastery, 192; must be immediately many-sided and recurring, 195, ig6; 
cumulative many-sidedness a means to their being remembered, 197; de- 
termination of their relative worth, 197; genetic conditions determining for 
them alone, 198, igg. 
Oral instruction: Must not result in only temporary self-activity or vague 
impression, 31. 

Partial concept: Basis for initial remembrance, 40; all knowledge cannot 
be adequate, 41; partial concepts the germs of mental growth, 42. See 
Mere remembrance. 

Payne, Joseph: Extreme academic concentration as means to formal disci- 
pline, 13, 76, Note 3; admission that other studies than Latin must be 
taught for their disciplinary value, 14, Note 6; fallacy of attempting to 
teach children all useful knowledge and activities, 13, 69, Notes 2 and 38; 
his attempt to teach science through the pile-driver, 261, Note 94. 

Payne, W. H.: His indication of the "tonic" value of education, 37, Note 24; 
points out Mr. Spencer's failure to distinguish between what is useful to the 
race through the specialist and what is directly useful to all, 112, 183, Note 
80. 

Pedagogical method: Overconfidence in academic method hurtful to disci- 
pline, 16; academic method a part of the discipline sought rather than a 
means to it, 297; pedagogical method demands logical organization, 260; 
can ensure certainty and system for any subject matter, 62; can ensure 
generally useful habits through direct preparation, 74; essential to the habit- 
ual consciousness of the most useful stimulus, 85; general discipline within 
the languages dependent upon it, 129; necessary to specialization, 283. 

Phonograph: A means to aesthetic training, 150. 

Physiology: Its failure to eliminate details mainly useful through the specialist, 
184, 185; organized from the standpoint of direct usefulness, 258. 

Protagoras : The part that music and literature played in the education of the 
Greek boy, 157, Note 75. 

Quick, R. H.: Remembered more through his personality than his teaching, 37, 
Note 26; gives a misapplication of Thomas Arnold's correlation of the 
classics with modern life, 162; his recognition of both interest and mechanical 
repetition, 170. 

Reading: Its various aims conflicting, 153, 154; unimpressive reading hostile 
to a taste for good literature, 154; the juvenilizing of literature hinders the 
development of vocabulary and aesthetic taste, 154, 155; intensive study of 
masterpieces prevents interest in general literature, 156; much reading 
essential to mere remembrance and varying apperception, 43 ; in mechanical 
reading mastery of phonograms essential, 201. 

Readjustment, demand for educational: Tendency toward it, 11-20; 
questionnaire of New York City high school teachers, 21-23; should be 
determined by scientific research, 23, 24, Note 16; taking the form of 
academic concentration and vocational specialization, 14, 15, 25-27; such 
readjustment inadequate, 178; readjustment through the dominance and 
continuity of useful system, 65, 73, and Chaps. IX and X. 

Reform, educational. See Readjustment. 

Relationships: Usefulness of ideas dependent upon them, ss, no; direct and 
indirect usefulness, 35, 36; forgotten relationships basal for cumulative im- 
pression, 33, 34; partial and incidental relationships for mere remembrance, 
34; many-sided and variable relationships for varying apperception, 34; 
definite and specific relationships for specific discipline, 35; specific and 
certain relationships having a general stimulus for general discipline, 35; 



ANALYTIC INDEX 317 

means of measuring the usefulness of relationships, iii; effectiveness of 
typical relationships, 56; fundamental distinction between optional and 
essential relationships, 165, 166. See Relative worth of relationships, 
Essential relationships, and Optional relationships. 

Relative w^orth of relationships, test for: Its fundamental phases. Chap. 
IV, iii; identical for direct preparation, formal self-activity, culture, and 
specialization, 162, 166; the psychological and physiological limit to 
memorizing makes necessary determination of the most useful relationships, 
166; an exact determination of relative worth unnecessary, 166, 167; ap- 
plication of the test ensures uniformity in essentials and in degree of use- 
fulness, 167-169; absence of immediate worth indicates need of elimination 
of specialized material, 183-186; the determination of what is relatively 
most useful to formal self-activity, Chap. VIII, 191-236; degree of sensation 
or emotion the chief measure for cumulative impression, 191 ; cumulative im- 
pression and mere remembrance furthered by mere impressibility and readi- 
ness of mastery, 192; apphcation of the test to determine relationships 
useful to mere remembrance, 195-213; identical for both essential and 
optional material, 195; the stage for partial mastery fixed by immediacy 
of usefulness, 196; genetic conditions determining for only optional material, 
198, 199; application of the test for varying apperception, 213-225; deter- 
mination of what is useful to general discipline, 225-236; many-sidedness and 
recurrence determining for locality and immediacy for grade, 230; applica- 
tion of the test results in cumulative system, 245-255; and determines the 
parts of academic branches to be included in it, 251, 252; its application to 
academic organization, 260-271; its apphcation to specialization, 271-274. 
See Elimination, Emotional appeal. Immediacy, and System. 

Remembrance. See Mere remembrance. 

Research, scientific educational: Should determine readjustment, 23, 24; 
United States Bureau should supervise it, 24, 299. 

Retentiveness, native: In high degree furthers mere remembrance, 43. 

Roosevelt, Theodore: Favorable review of Amherst reaction from direct 
preparation for life, 26, 141, 161, Note 18. 

Rounds, C. R.: His attempt to ensure uniformity in nomenclature in English 
grammar and language books, 129, Notes 44 and 62. See Hale and Kcur- 
steiner. 

Rush, Benjamin: His opposition to undemocratic culture, 27, 137, Notes 19 
and 66. 

School city: A very partial panacea for interests hostile to school, 38. 

Schwatt, Isaac J.: Argument favoring academic concentration in mathe- 
matical teaching, 15, 135, Note 10. 

Self-activity: See Formal self -activity. 

Sensational appeal as a factor in determining relative worth. See 
Emotional appeal. 

Sheldon, Winthrop D.: The teaching of m^orality through literature, 254, 
Note 90. 

Smith, Eugene: His effort to use the study of arithmetic as a means to vary- 
ing apperception, 117, 118. ^ 

Specialization: Mere specialization hostile to general culture and direct 
preparation, 25-28; distinction between specific discipline essential to the 
general student and that essential to the specialist, 67; modern culture so 
extensive as to make necessary specialization in culture itself, 28, 138, 139; 
specialization, culture, and direct preparation for life should parallel each 
other, 159, 172-178; Greek and Latin mainly within the field of specializa- 
tion, 160-162, 276-278; so with the development of artistic expression, 
146, 147; the greater part of mathematics, 123-126, 274-276; and the in- 
tensive study of the natural sciences, 131; subjective specialization in the 
lower grades assured through optional material, 172, 173; all forms of 



3i8 ANALYTIC INDEX 

specialization must vary with individuals, 174; whether specialization 
results in concentration and specific discipline depends upon pedagogic 
method, 174; in higher schools it must not exclude what is essential to 
direct preparation in general, 175; wasteful to compel individuals to 
specialize on disciplinary ground alone, 177; elimination of all details 
useful only to the specialist, 183-186; three distinct kinds of specialization 
variously aflfected by the test of relative worth, 271; it determines what 
should be permanently retained and the order in which it should be mas- 
tered, 272; specialization in mathematics and the languages should begin 
early, 274-278; even specialization in avocation determined by the test of 
relative worth, 278-281; it also determines the relative part to be played 
by specialization and general education, 280; continuity only secondarily 
assured through specialization. Chap. X, 282-294; but to ensure it specializa- 
tion must supplement direct preparation, 296. See Academic concentra- 
tion and Vocational specialization. 

Specific discipline : The one phase of formal self-activity whichis definite and 
certain, 57; involves system as well as habit, 57; equal certainty to that of 
experience necessary through instruction for the most useful habit and 
system, 57; specific discipline the most essential condition to the usefulness 
of other phases of formal self-activity, 58, 59, 74, 237; useful apperception 
must be specific as well as varying, 59, 60; the general usefulness of specific 
discipline emphasizes mechanical memorizing, 75, 165; reaction against 
memorizing has left specific discipline too largely to individual determina- 
tion, 60; individual apperception and specific mastery supplementary, 60; 
abstract subjects compel temporary certainty and system, 60; certainty 
and system the first steps toward general discipline, 61; continuity often 
lacking in the abstract subject after formal study ceases, 61, 72, 73; con- 
tinuity must be insured through useful relationships, 66; pedagogical or- 
ganization and method can ensure certainty and system in any branch of 
study, 62; direct preparation for each essential phase of Hfe demands 
greater system, certainty, and continuity than the formal subjects, 63, 73; 
confined to specialization and incidental experience specific discipHne 
tends to make life too one-sided, 64, 65; directly useful systems must be 
made dominant, 65, 73; discipline through studying the formal subjects 
as wholes wasteful if they are not useful as wholes, 66, 177, 178; the sys- 
tem made certain through instruction must include those of experience, 
67; to dominate experience, it must be certainly related to life, 67, 68; 
such domination dependent upon varying apperception and general disci- 
pline, 6q; only the most useful relationships can be made certain, 70, 82-84; 
many-sidedness and specific discipline supplementary, 69; specific disci- 
pline a condition to the usefulness of all other self-activity, 57-59, 70-76, 
98-101; academic system as a whole does not carry over beyond its special 
field, 68; for the sake of discipline alone a particular academic subject 
should not be required of all, 66; inadequacy of specific discipline, 69; 
the completeness of treatment demanded by specialists hostile to disci- 
pline, 133; application of the test of relative worth results in a cumulative 
and dominating specific system. Chap. IX, 237-281; it culminates in system 
favorable to formal self-activity, that essential to direct preparation, and 
that involved in specialization, 238; the system favorable to formal self- 
activity and direct preparation lacking in ordinary academic study, 239; 
the application of the test of relative worth results in these systems, 245-255; 
continuity and dominance of system primarily brought about by direct 
preparation; secondarily, through specialization. Chap. X, 282, 299; from 
the standpoint of continuity, habit need be considered in four degrees of 
complexity, 282-285. 

Spelling: Test to determine the relative usefulness of spelling words, 201; 
aided by etymological grouping, 208; specific spelling drill should be 
limited to words frequently recurring in ordinary writing, 211. , 



ANALYTIC INDEX 3^9 



SP.KCEK, HEKBEKT A-mes the ad a„acy ^ ^^^^-^^^^^Z 

academic systems cannot be ^PPj ^^^^l,^^^^^^^ 

fields, 79, t°l'^'''%f''t^ll''^^^^^ in special- 

actyity that essential to di^^ the determination of relative 

''^^l^^?cVo be strSy distinguished from mere logical outline or mode 
branches that stand the te.t of relative worm, 249 j j furthered 

tive worth, 252,, a national sysLeiuu ^^reDaration demands cumula- 

ideals or is dominated by ^tem, 254, direct^^^^^^^^^ ^ ^^^ demand 

tive system, 245^260; where 4^^^ ^J^.^'^r.^^Jg ^50^ d^ of rela- 

logical organization, Pedagogical method do^^ ^^ ^^.^^^^ 

tive worth both ensures and hmits academic o^^^^^^ ^ branches differ 

it is cumulative rather t^^an comprehensive 262 tn^va .^ _ 

greatly in the extent to which ^ff ^^^^^X^i'J.fi method," 264; 
sible, 262; cumulative system ajj^^^ ."^^^J artificial correlation, 265; 
renders unnecessary incidental f st^^ct;^^^;^^ of academic system with 
the true means to continuity f5,corvdat^ono aca y^.^ ^^^ 

direct preparation essential to genera discipline /, j^^j ^^^ 

rectly useful organization should pardleeach^ther 05 ^^.^^ ^^^ 

dominance for cumuktives_yse^^r^^^^^^^^^^^ P^^^.^^^ ^^^.^ 

S:sTbrcSd?ed^in\u\'^ of complexity, 282-285. 

TEMPERANCE iNSXK.CTiON, sciENTiEic: A partial phase of temperance training, 
Thok^Sbike, W. L.: Experiments c.used^^^^^^^^^^ 

88. See General stimulus. 

UKirOKM co^sE o. -r?r>^^^^f^^;^^^S^ZSXM be 
essential relationships, Chap. V;,h„',JIn in themselves, 167-169; uniform- 
identical in "1^7 ,7;S^",S"r/S;'tS SateSIs enipha'si^ed 168. 

V. ^%v^.To?eSvcaX ZMs.p.r.is. scientific educational research, 

VarvIg apperception: D-tta-if l^^d from o'her 8^^^^^^ IfuTcSnStS 
the means to recol ection and '^o""" 'f!'°";;l°i„''J'' " 51; aPP"ception 
demands useful s^-^bordmation and sys emataatwn^^ S^^^^ 

slTsfaS;^^' yT^Tpp^erptio'n'i^; ^^'"0 cumulative impression, 



320 ANALYTIC INDEX 

52, 96; the most useful varying apperception, 53; all imagination and 
many-sided experience useful if they are not harmful, 54; varying apper- 
ception as a means to general discipline, 48, 96-98; here a means to ap- 
plication rather than to mere generalization, 97; the formal subjects too 
limited in subject matter to ensure it, 114; furthered by ready use of a 
foreign language rather than by process of mastery, 114; such ready use 
infrequent, 115; the reading of good translations adequate for varying 
apperception, 115; mastery of mathematics of little aid, 116-119, Note 57; 
number too general in its application to ensure many-sided associations, 118; 
varying apperception furthered by the most many-sided and recurring 
relationships wherever found, 119; best assured through material organized 
for direct furtherance, 120; apperception should be of the stimulus in its 
most useful form, 97; the determination of the relationships most useful to 
it, 213-225; not only memory centers, but systems of centers, useful, 213; 
but only when they are both many-sided and recurring, 214; the waste- 
fulness of memorizing detailed outlines, 215; centers and systems for vary- 
ing apperception need not be directly useful, 215; but in general education 
only direct preparation should be given dominance, 216; academic corre- 
lation inadequate for useful apperception, 216; the more general phases of 
personal experience and general historical and geographical localities and 
sequence most useful, 217; instruction must select the parts of personal 
experience to which optional content is to be related, 218; experience mainly 
useful to varying apperception through accidental and even absurd juxta- 
positions, 219; increasingly exact location necessary as knowledge of details 
increases, 220; great artists and their masterpieces should be associated with 
each other, 221 ; such association as truly the work of college as of secondary 
school, 221; furthers democratic culture and ensures the most useful varying 
apperception, 222; instruction must ensure the certain memorizing of useful 
centers and persistent association of new material with them, 223; their 
usefulness dependent upon that of the optional material^ thus brought to 
bear, 224; ready use of a foreign language an aid to varying apperception, 
224. 
Vocational specialization: Hostile to democracy if at the expense of direct 
preparation for life in general or of general culture and discipHne, 25; 
vocational motive too partial a panacea for influences hostile to the_ school, 
38; partly identical with direct preparation in general in its essential rela- 
tionships, 177; the test of relative worth determines which vocational rela- 
tionships should be permanently retained, 272; should be prepared for 
through academic specialization in the earliest school years, 286-292; its 
initial Hmit economic conditions, 284; impracticable as a means to con- 
tinuity, 28s; academic specialization should be strengthened by varying 
vocational motive, 286; it in turn should re-enforce direct preparation, 288. 

War: All that interests young children in bloodshed should be excluded from 
the course of study, 182, 183; importance of ensuring a cumulative impres- 
sion of the horrors and sufferings of war, 183. 

Wayland, Francis: His "new system" prophetic of the cumulative system of 
direct preparation, 245, Note 88. 

West, Andrew Fleming: His attack on direct preparation for life, 26, Note 17; 
his reference to men who are educated, but not intelligent, 37, Note 25. 

White, James T.: The teaching of morality through biography, 254, Note_92. 

Wilson, Woodrow: His demand for academic concentration through eliminat- 
ing social distractions, 15, Note 8; his insistence that more foreign languages 
should be mastered previous to college entrance, 127, 128, Note 59. 



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